Filming Dementia Together:
A 2-Day Conference Shoot for CatholicCare in Mackay.

CatholicCare Central Queensland brought me in to cover their Dementia Together event in Mackay. Two days, two very different audiences. Day one was for healthcare providers. Day two was for the public. Same subject, same room, completely different energy. This is how I covered it.

The brief

The deliverable was a highlight reel and event photography. The video was for promoting the program, supporting future events, and giving CatholicCare a piece of content they could use across socials, internal comms, and conversations with funders and stakeholders.

Dementia Together is a Federally funded program run through CatholicCare Central Queensland that supports people living with dementia and their carers. It runs across Mackay and the broader Central Queensland region, with retreats, education, and respite built around making the dementia journey more manageable. The Mackay event was sitting inside that bigger picture, and the video needed to reflect both the practical side of the program and the human side of the people in the room.

That kind of brief is one of the most useful things a client can give a videographer. It tells me what the highlight reel needs to do after the day is over, which directly shapes what gets filmed during it.

Day one: healthcare providers

Day one was the professional audience. Aged care workers, allied health, community service staff, anyone whose work brings them into contact with people living with dementia and their families. The conversation was technical, the questions were sharp, and the energy was the kind you get when a room full of people are taking notes because they know they will use this on Monday.

For the video, that meant leaning into:

• Speakers in delivery, with clean audio and tight framing on the lectern
• Audience reactions during the Q and A, especially the moments where someone in the room nodded or wrote something down
• The networking around morning tea, which is where the real conversations happen at any conference
• Detail shots of the program materials and the venue

This is the audience that signs the cheques and sends the referrals. Capturing them engaging properly with the content matters as much as capturing the content itself.

Day two: the public

Day two flipped the room. Same speakers, same venue, but the audience was now people living with dementia, their carers, their families, and members of the broader Mackay community wanting to learn more.

The energy is different and the camera approach has to follow. People in this room are not there to take notes. They are there to be heard, to ask the question they have been carrying for months, and to feel a bit less alone with what they are dealing with. The footage that matters from a day like that is not the slide deck. It is the moments between sessions. Two carers comparing notes over a cup of tea. A husband holding his wife's hand during a presentation. The quiet stuff.

You also film a lot less of the audience face-on. Privacy and dignity sit higher on the priority list than capturing every reaction shot. That is a judgement call you keep making throughout the day, and it is the kind of thing a brief never spells out for you.

Why I run two cameras at conferences

For Dementia Together I ran a two-camera setup. One body locked off on a tripod at the back of the room covering the speaker wide, the other on a gimbal moving through the room.

The tripod cam is the safety net. It is rolling continuously, cleanly framed, recording the audio off the lectern. If anything goes wrong with the gimbal cam, the talk is still in the bag. If a speaker drops a quote that becomes the spine of the highlight reel, I have it from start to finish without missing the setup.

The gimbal cam is where the story gets built. Push-ins on speaker faces, slow movement across the audience, walking shots through the morning tea crowd, low-angle pieces from the side of the room. Movement turns a static talk into something that feels alive on screen. It also gives the editor B-roll options that a locked-off shot can never produce.

The reason this matters for conference video is simple. A two-camera setup with one moving and one static is the difference between a highlight reel that holds attention and one that feels like a slide presentation with music. On a single-camera shoot, you are constantly choosing between a clean wide and a moving shot. With two cameras, you get both, and the edit cuts together properly.

Photography running alongside

The stills coverage was the other half of the brief. Speakers mid-delivery, room shots showing the scale, attendees engaging with each other during breaks, and the quieter detail shots that work for press releases and program reports.

One thing worth flagging on jobs like this is that running video and photography solo is always a compromise. My primary focus is video the moment a session starts, because the audio, the movement, and the timing all have to be right. The photography happens around it. For most corporate event briefs in Mackay that balance works fine, but on bigger jobs with heavier deliverables on both sides, bringing in a dedicated photographer is the right call. That gets discussed at brief stage rather than figured out on the day.

What conferences in Mackay actually need from a video

The reason a program like Dementia Together gets a videographer in the room is not to record the conference. It is to extract everything the conference is worth, after the conference is over.

A two-day event in Mackay is a significant lift for any organisation. The speakers, the venue, the catering, the staff time, the months of planning. The highlight reel is what lets all of that keep working for you long after the room has packed up. It promotes next year's event. It supports the next funding submission. It gives stakeholders and board members a two-minute version of why this program matters. It feeds your social channels for months.

That is the lens I shoot conferences through. Every shot is being captured with an eye on what the edit needs to do for the client afterwards.

If you want the full breakdown of how I approach conference and corporate event coverage in Mackay, including how I work with briefs, what gets delivered, and how turnarounds work, that lives on my conference videographer Mackay page. There is also a deeper read on broader commercial videography in Mackay if you are weighing up what kind of coverage your event actually needs.