Look up - at The Royal Pavilion

Picture this: it’s a drizzly Thursday, late October. I’m knee-deep in editing recent projects, which have been loads of fun, but I am wondering if I’ll ever feel the sun on my face again, chained to the desk as I am this week. But then – a call. It’s out of the blue, it’s someone I don’t know, and it turns out to be my ticket out of the office!

I’d been referred to Brighton and Hove Museums (I still don’t know who by, so thank you!) and was being approached to showcase the iconic Royal Pavilion in the heart of Brighton city. Brighton and Hove Museums wanted a tight and impactful little 30-second expo video showcasing their flagship venue – challenge one, how could you contain everything you wanted to showcase about this massive and beautiful space in just 30 seconds?! – and then the plot thickened again – challenge two, could I have it done for the following Friday, eight days from now?

Buckle up, kids. Because I’ll tell you what… that’s exactly what we flipping did. And I had an absolute blast (and not just getting out of the house).

Pre-production:

Lucy and the team at Brighton and Hove Museums were fantastic. They’d called me on Thursday, we were chatting through the brief on Friday, we wasted no time and arranged the shoot for Monday, leaving me with Tuesday and Wednesday to knock-out an edit and a little wiggle room for amendments before hopefully signing off on the project on Friday (blows end of smoking gun barrel). It was going to be all hands on deck, but I was up for the challenge.

Although, when I say ‘all hands’… on this occasion I mean ‘me’. My creative team on this shoot consisted of ‘me’, and it is always a mental and creative juggling act when I get presented with challenges like this one: the creative vision, the filming, the editing – even choosing the appropriate soundtrack. It’s satisfying but daunting at the same time! If I could pull it off, it would be amazing. But if I messed up? I’d literally only have myself to blame…

Another little detail about the spec Lucy wanted was one that really shaped my entire approach; they wanted people to come away with a new and – literally – ‘inside’ perspective of the Royal Pavilion, getting a glimpse inside the building so famous for its external majesty and iconic silhouette. Not only that, but they wanted to get people ‘to look up’; a simple phrase, but one that went on to shape a lot of my shoot and my edit on this 30-second promo.

The Shoot and getting hands-on:

Lucy mentioned to me that they hoped for some impactful and slow, sweeping shots, really taking in the grandeur of the historic space. And you might think that it would be easy to capture such sweeping shots in such a large space… But you’d be wrong! I had to get creative with my frames, realising that I could just do some generic wide shots in a large room (shocker), but I wanted to deliver something to my client that couldn’t be achieved by the average Joe with his camera phone.

It's surprisingly difficult to try and capture everything that the Royal Pavilion has to offer. A wonderful aspect to a punter’s day-out there, but a real head-scratcher for a videographer trying to produce a video – and a 30-second video at that! Everywhere you look in the venue, there’s something to see; the size, the scale, the wash of colour, the intricate details – in all directions, side to side, and up and down. I almost didn’t know what to point my camera at first.

Not to mention trying to capture the expanse of the room and every delicious detail on offer at eye-level, but also remembering to look up and somehow capture the spectacular 10-15 metre ceilings too – and somehow in the same frame?!

Another aspect of shooting to spec is the constant mental maths required. To all the world – and to all the staff and members of the public I saw and spoke to on the day – I probably looked like I was randomly collecting material and I’d get home and somehow splice it all together. In my head, I was already having to consider the short-list of footage to edit.

Lucy had mentioned about slow, sweeping shots. But we only had 30-seconds to play with. A ‘slow’ shot would probably be about three seconds. Which allowed a creative budget for ten of those. But when you consider Intro and Outro information that needed to be included on the final video, including any ‘calls to action’ that the client wanted, realistically we were looking at eight sweeping shots. Eight! Potentially just eight shots to capture The Royal Pavilion.

Priorities – the devil’s in the details:

Of course, you couldn’t capture everything that The Royal Pavilion had to offer, that would be mad. You’d end up creating something that looked like one of those walking trail videos you find on treadmills and cross-trainers at the gym. I can safely say that when you work with me at mikebdesigns, I won’t turn up with a GoPro strapped to my chest. Unless you ask me to…

For one thing, I didn’t end up shooting any drone footage, which may seem daft considering how famous and instantly recognisable the outside of the building is! However, Brighton’s returning ice-rink was back, and the building was playing host to some scaffolding, meaning that the external shots just weren’t going to be what I’d hoped. Brighton and Hove Museums did make some previous drone footage available, which was really accommodating of them, but it wasn’t quite the shot I was after. Ideally, I wanted a shot from a lower perspective, to really show what the visitors were going to see and experience when they came to The Royal Pavilion. Overhead drone shots can be stunning and jaw-dropping, but… it wasn’t what people were going to actually experience themselves. Unless they parachuted in.

In the end, for the entire project, I had to prioritise and compromise, as I end up doing with most shoots. I wanted a mix of shots, to cover a range of perspectives that a visiting punter would experience too – I wanted the sweeping shots of vast, opulent royal bed chambers and banqueting halls, and I wanted to notice the subtle details of the artwork – the Chinese figurines, the carved, serpentine dragons. The colour. The attention to light – which was a mark of Brighton and Hove Museums’ attention to detail, but also a real technical challenge for me!

Technical Challenges and Limitations:

I always really appreciate venues that manage to delicately cradle a moment of history and hold it suspended in time. It would be all too easy to flood each feature and over-expose every room – dehumanising, depersonalising and depreciating the scene right in front of us. But by freezing time in its tracks – by bottling history in the way that Brighton and Hove Museums have done with The Royal Pavilion and their other historic venues – they show a dedication and respect that I admire. In reality, The Royal Pavilion in its day would have known candlelight and not a lot else. The company have opted for dim LED lighting (far safer than the risk of burning the entire place to the ground!) to replicate the authentic vibe.

As a regular visitor, this moody, atmospheric heaviness helps you feel immersed in the history of the place. Our sight and our smell play a crucial role. It’s like walking around an old castle and smelling waxed or polished wood, or the heavy velvet drapes of a four-poster bed that smell slightly moth-ball-y. It really puts you in the action.

As a videographer, however, dim lighting presented a problem. Especially since talking to Lucy had made it clear that ‘colour’ was so important to capture in this shoot: there’s so much extraordinary artwork and so many architectural features to showcase considerately.

 I had to be really careful with my ISO settings and make sure that the footage wasn’t too grainy in the low lighting. Where the human eye can process, the camera is far less forgiving!

Size does matter:

Part of the intention to capture the hidden gems of The Royal Pavilion meant really paying attention to my surroundings and getting up-close-and-personal with everything from the delicate subtleties of colours and fabrics, all the way through to angles and perspectives that you just may not think to appreciate.

This actually led me to look up, and only by doing so did I really appreciate a stunning and elaborate lighting fixture suspended from the lofty ceiling of the Banqueting Hall.

It wasn’t just a cascade of crystal in the form of an intricate chandelier – keep looking up – and it wasn’t just the huge, glass lotus-petal bowl pendant lights – keep looking up – and it wasn’t just the huge wreath of celestial rays, looking like an angelic morning-star – keep looking up – it was the gigantic, golden, winged dragon that dangled the entire bejewelled waterfall seemingly in its talons.

To wide-eyed, slack-jawed punters ogling from tens of feet below, the full impact could easily be lost – the beast hidden in shadow, the intricate details of the artistry blurred into visual assumptions. But by whipping out my 200-600 lens (ooh Matron), I can show people the brushstrokes on this thing. And I was so excited to be able to capture something that not everyone would get to snap on their own cameras and phones – to be able to give them a front row seat (am I sounding too much like John Hammond in Jurassic Park?). Even the amazing staff who worked there told me that they’d never seen it that close before. That felt like a majorly satisfying thing to tick off the list of things to prioritise! What can I say - some can sing, some can dance, but some of us have ridiculously big camera lenses…

Magic (don’t say Mike…) Moments:

As with so many of my shoots, the people really made it for me. Not only the wonderful staff (thanks again, Tony) who I’ve already mentioned, who were so knowledgeable and who I got on with so well (hopefully I’ll see you again soon on another project!). I had a fair few people ask me what I was doing (I suppose they wondered if the strange man crouched in the middle of the Ballroom with camera equipment strapped to him, squinting through the camera viewfinder, was part of a new immersive-history instalment), and a mother and daughter actually asked if they could get involved in any way and be featured in the video!

As it turned out, their involvement was like the cherry on the cake. In a video set out to inspire awe, the two of them visually led the charge getting the viewers to look up, pointing and smiling and chatting, and literally being the ones of reveal these beautiful artworks or angles to the wider audience from the simple point of their fingers.

So, how did I help the client shine, and what did I take away from the experience?

Of course, the real client wasn’t Lucy from Brighton and Hove Museums, but The Royal Pavilion itself. Ultimately, I think we captured the majesty of the incredible building – we showed off the size and expanse; we managed to place people in the space to really get a sense of the scale, and by doing so we also effectively paved the way for showing people how they could and should react and how they should interact with the space. (Because, remember, any video shot for somebody else, and especially a company, has an intention. It’s not just a compilation of footage. It’s got a narrative – a story or a sale that it’s trying to land.)

I came away feeling inspired and humbled by the whole experience – feeling dwarfed as I did by the responsibility to uphold the history of this place - a venue that has been a huge part of the fabric of Brighton and Hove for generations - and knowing that I was only one out of thousands of visitors and professionals alike who had set out to capture the beauty of the iconic building.

I feel proud that I managed to pull out all the stops to liaise, shoot, edit and deliver a product in such a short amount of time. I also feel incredibly proud and touched that I was referred for the job in the first place. It means a lot to me that – for a company the size of mikebdesigns (and, really, that means for me as a solo artist) – I’m delivering products and services that put me on the map. And for the fact that someone wanted to refer my name and my brand, I’m so grateful.

I’m also really proud of the creative vision that I got to express on this shoot. At the end of the day, I’m not just a guy with a big camera lens – I’m a creative myself, with background in dance, drama and music. I’m visual. I’m visceral. Being able to look up at the iconic domed ceilings of The Royal Pavilion, shooting footage based in movement, knowing how it would pair beautifully with music – seeing a waltz play out in my mind’s eye, just with architecture instead of aristocrats – is one of the most satisfying elements of the shooting and editing process.

I love, with every shoot, that I get to tell a story. Footage and music go hand-in-hand, and for me on this shoot it felt like something as natural and intrinsic as pairing steak with red wine, or a blue cheese with a ruby port.

I really hope that you can see the fun I had when you see the final footage.

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Proudly not written by AI, and with thanks to the very human Judey Bignell, who makes my words less chaotic.