Pollen Studio

 We were commissioned in December by C-Saj/Fox Agency to work on a great project for OVH Cloud on some Out Of Home ads, and socials that needed to be ready for a mid January delivery. We needed to deliver a 30, 20 and 4 x 10s edits. Oh and portrait versions of them that required a portrait mount of the camera for the high speed sections. That’s right.

The concepts were great - slow motion footage showing a hero shot of each main character, a mixture of locations both inside and out that needed sourcing, and an ambitious client team that wanted really polished footage to match their vision. We spent 2 weeks in pre-production and found locations all over York that were perfect, but we still had to cross fingers for good weather in December….

We filmed a key sequence in front of a bespoke built video wall, with high speed filming in front (which technically was a real challenge due to refresh rates and some other tech babble), and another with a really cool paper throw in a bright and airy office that we lined up the main shot for as much Kubrickian lines and framing that we could. The outside sequences needed to look like a sunny day - not easy in December, but we managed with some lightweight generators and new high output LED lights that could replicate a 5K arri sun but without a massive diesel generator.

Another key sequence was filmed in a Robotics lab at York University, which with a typically ambitious reach from Director Tom, required a robotic arm to be programmed to fist bump our main character and then wave during our high speed sequence - very hard to pull off, but it went smoother than an otters cravat.

Everything was filmed on arri mini, using steadicam or motorised slider, and we lensed the whole project with Cooke Speed Panchros, which look gorgeous on skin tones, but equally have some incredible character with light flares.

Very happy client and agency. Post production was completed by Pollen but we received some well appreciated support on the graphic animations by Fox due to the timelines being right over Christmas and New Year.

Some BTS images below. Tom really needs to find a new way to stand on set.