05 Apr Case Study: Ireland’s Fittest Company
Who is the National Maternity Hospital Foundation?
The National Maternity Hospital Foundation (NMH Foundation) is the charitable fundraising body supporting the National Maternity Hospital at Holles Street in Dublin — one of Ireland’s busiest maternity hospitals. The Foundation raises awareness and funds for equipment, research, and services that directly benefit mothers and babies in its care.
What is Ireland’s Fittest Company?
Ireland’s Fittest Company is an annual fundraising event organised by the NMH Foundation, held at Killruddery Estate in County Wicklow. Teams of four take on an outdoor obstacle course designed to test endurance, teamwork, speed, and mental agility across a challenging cross-country course through woodland and hillside terrain. The event attracts corporate teams from across Ireland, combining competitive fitness with charitable fundraising for the National Maternity Hospital.
What was the brief?
The NMH Foundation commissioned Idiosync Films to produce a highlights video covering the event — capturing the energy, challenge, and atmosphere of the day. The primary purpose of the video was promotional: to serve as a compelling piece of content that would drive registrations for the following year’s event. To achieve this, the video needed to feel exciting and cinematic, communicating both the physical demands of the course and the fun, community-driven spirit of participation.
What were the production challenges?
Ireland’s Fittest Company presented a distinctive set of logistical challenges. The obstacle course spans a large outdoor area across varied terrain — woodland, hills, and open ground — with dozens of participants moving through different sections of the course simultaneously throughout the day. No single camera position could cover the event adequately. Capturing the full scope of the course while remaining close enough to participants to record genuine human moments — effort, laughter, team support, physical achievement — required the crew to cover significant ground on foot in real time.
Weather and terrain added further variables. Outdoor events on Irish hillsides in September can change conditions quickly, and the rugged ground across Killruddery Estate required the crew to move with agility while protecting camera equipment.
How was the production approach structured?
Idiosync Films supplied two videographers and a stills photographer, equipped with two 4K cameras, a 4K drone, and wireless microphones for vox-pop interviews with participants.
The crew split into separate units to cover the course simultaneously. Each videographer followed different groups of participants through different sections of the route, ensuring continuous coverage of the event from multiple points on the course. This division of coverage meant that no matter where the most compelling moments occurred — at an obstacle, on a hill climb, crossing a finish line — a camera was positioned to capture it.
The drone provided a third visual perspective unavailable to either ground crew: sweeping aerial shots of the course layout, overhead tracking of teams navigating obstacles, and wide views of the Killruddery Estate that communicated the scale and setting of the event in a way no ground-level camera can. Aerial coverage of an outdoor multi-terrain event is particularly valuable for promotional video because it shows the full geography of what participants are signing up for — something that matters directly to the decision to register.
Wireless microphones allowed the team to capture spontaneous vox-pop interviews with participants throughout the day — reactions in the moment, team banter, and genuine reflections on the experience that add human texture to what could otherwise be a purely visual highlights reel.
What filming technique was used?
The majority of the event footage was captured in slow motion at 60fps. For outdoor action events of this kind, slow motion serves several purposes simultaneously. It makes physical movement — sprinting, climbing, jumping, scrambling — look more dramatic and cinematic than the same footage captured at standard frame rate. It provides the editor with more usable material per minute of filming, which is critical when covering a large, fast-moving event where not every shot can be perfectly timed. And it gives the final edit a polished, broadcast quality feel that reinforces the credibility of the event and the organisation behind it.
How was the video edited and finished?
Post-production combined the aerial drone footage, multi-camera ground coverage, and vox-pop interviews into a fast-paced highlights video designed to hold attention and generate excitement. Energetic, licence-free music was selected to match the physical energy of the event and drive the pacing of the edit. Graphics and event branding were incorporated to give the video a polished, professional finish consistent with the NMH Foundation’s identity.
The finished video was used on the NMH Foundation’s website event page and across social media channels to promote registration for the following year’s event. The 2026 edition of Ireland’s Fittest Company is scheduled for Friday 11 September at Killruddery Estate, with team entry open at €1,200 per team of four.
What does this project demonstrate about charity event video production?
Fundraising events depend on momentum — the energy of one year’s event needs to feed directly into registrations for the next. A well-produced highlights video is one of the most effective tools available to a charity or foundation for sustaining that momentum, because it allows people who were not at the event to experience what it felt like to be there. For corporate team-building events in particular, a video that communicates both the physical challenge and the atmosphere of the day is a direct driver of registration decisions.
The logistical complexity of covering a multi-terrain outdoor obstacle course also illustrates a broader principle in event video production: the more dispersed and dynamic the event, the more important it is to plan crew coverage in advance rather than responding reactively on the day. Splitting a small crew into independent units, each responsible for a defined section of the course, is a more reliable approach than a single roving camera trying to be everywhere at once.
Idiosync Films produces event highlights and fundraising videos for charities, foundations, and corporate clients across Ireland. Contact us to discuss your next event.