Berkeley Group: Behind The Scenes

Overview

Working with Matt Livey our brief was to create a short inspirational promotional video that showcased a small part of the incredibly diverse portfolio of properties built by the Berkeley Group.

Properties covered:

  • Roehampton House
  • Student Castle, Aldgate
  • Imperial Wharf
  • Edenbrook, Fleet
  • Kingshill Meadow, Cirencester
  • Riverlight, Vauxhall
  • Woodbury Down, Finsbury Park
  • Royal Arsenal Riverside, Woolwich

With a production turn around time of just three weeks we had a lot of properties to cover and many miles on the clock to rack up! One of the most exciting shoot days was at the construction site at Riverlight in Vauxhall. The aim here was to grab fast paced footage of the building work for the second half of the video. Swinging around over London in a 'man cage' attached to a crane was certainly a highlight of the day. It's safe to say I no longer have a fear of heights.

Filming during the construction at Riverlight, Vauxhall


Aerial Videography

Using aerial drone footage was really important in this project to get across the shear scale of some of the locations. Five locations were chosen for the drone treatment. Edenbrook, Kingshill Meadow, Woodbury Down, Roehampton House and Royal Arsenal Riverside. 

Random

A little bit improvisation goes along way.

 

 


Production Technicals

We chose to shoot this entirely on DSLR's for a small footprint, using multiple 5D Mkiii's with various rigs and contraptions. The Edelkrone pocket slider was as useful as ever as well as Matts jib arm. Lighting, a combination of redheads and LED's depending on the scenario. A small Marshall monitor on hand for the tricky birds-eye view shots. We were often up against the clock on most days so since teh team was most comfortable on the mk3 we rolled with those.

Music would be a key element to the film, and after a few tests we settled on two final tracks found through The Music Bed. From there a small bit of foley was added in post to highlight some key scenes and to add a new dimension to the visuals. 

Post workflow

It's these kind of projects that I feel FCPX comes into it's own. Fast capturing and keywording clips to your hearts content means your straight down to editing. 


BEHIND THE SCENES VIDEO

A quick montage of some behind the scenes footage, shot on DSLR and iPhone. I never really had a 'BTS' in mind when shooting this, so hopefully future ones with be a little bit more informative! But for now, queue montage, in 3, 2, 1...


Final VIDEO