Building an office set in Snowdonia for my company’s first advert

Man of action: our client Damien prepares to run and jump into the lake!

With every new endeavour comes a healthy mix of risk and reward. For me, this applied not only to the endeavour itself - my new video production company Long Story Short - but also to the task of putting the company on the map.

After nearly seven years running my own business as a freelancer, I knew I would have to do something bold for our first project as a company. So when Damien and Finix Group came to us wanting to film an advert up in the mountains of Snowdonia, I didn’t need much convincing!

Pre-Production

The Concept

Finix Group’s mission is to enable positive change for their clients by taking the learning to the great outdoors in order to embed key skills and knowledge in a whole new way. Damien knew the tone he wanted to put across - fun and quirky, yet also professional and clear.

Through a series of meetings and calls, we honed in on exactly what we wanted to do: a light-hearted, witty explainer video with Damien as the narrator, trekking through some of Snowdonia’s most beautiful locations while explaining the company’s services.

"I was put in contact with Jamie and his team when I needed a company video created. I needed something quirky and fresh, and we had a few calls to work out the storyboard, script, locations, etc...”

Locations

Since the courses Finix offer are delivered out in the beauty of the natural world, it was important that the locations we showed off in the video were representative of that. Damien is an expert on the area, and offered up many possible alternatives. However, each one came with its own set of unique challenges: some were too far from base camp; some required a long hike to the top; and some even would’ve required the camera person to get in a canoe with our equipment to get the shot! In the end, we settled on locations that provided the most value for the time and effort we were putting in to get to them.

Script

Dave is our Creative Production Assistant at Long Story Short, and he proved to be an amazing help in writing the script alongside me. Coming from a comedy background, he helped infuse the script with the comedic timing and one-liners that Damien was looking for. We came up with all sorts of wacky ideas: from ending the film up on a mountain, to a fully suited-and-booted Damien diving headfirst into a lake! In amidst all that however, we came up with the most bonkers idea of the whole film: to have Damien emerge out of an office meeting room right out onto the mountaintop.

Production

Sourcing materials

I left London with the client and our modest crew in the morning, with shooting set to begin the next day. Instead of hiring a van, we decided to source most of what we needed for the office set once we had arrived in Wales, with the exception of certain key props. This was nearly to be our undoing, however, as even though the B&Q website had assured us the materials we needed were in stock, it turned out we were in no such luck. There was no point in panicking though, and due to some quick thinking from my crew, we were able to scrabble together enough materials to still be able to fulfil our vision of the opening shot.

“If I am honest, what Jamie wanted to do I thought was too difficult in terms of getting the shot and building a classroom in the middle of nowhere in Snowdonia, but I went with it.”

Nailing the shot

After an early breakfast, we got straight to work. We had two days to film the advert, shooting multiple set-ups across Snowdonia, so we had no time to waste. Our priority was getting that first shot out of the way: the film would open in a dull office, with phones ringing and idle chatter in the background, representing the way Finix’s competition handle things. Then, the walls would open up to reveal the beautiful landscape around Damien as he confidently strides forward.

First, we had to get all the materials up to the location, each person doing their bit and carrying a load. The night before, we came across a kind traveller, who offered to help join the production, with the promise of a warm curry as a thank you! Things like that happen so much in filmmaking, and it often serves to remind me of the excitement that people feel towards the thing that I get to do for a living.

My DP Callum O’Sullivan and Production Assistant Dave Litchfield leapt straight to work building the set, while I went over the script with Damien. The effort and dedication that everyone put into the film meant that we nailed the shot, and I genuinely didn’t ever doubt that we would.

Tough decisions

Once we had the office scene in the bag, we had a lot more to shoot, but it felt like we had overcome our biggest hurdle right out the gate. We spent the rest of the day climbing up literal mountains for certain shots and leaping headfirst into lakes for others.

I went into this film with a lot of big, crazy ideas, and I was thrilled we made most of them happen. The next day, the cast and crew were rightly exhausted, and I made the decision to cut a fun sequence that would’ve had Damien in a fast-moving canoe shouting his monologue to our camera in another one.

I was gutted to cut that visual, but I do think that earlier in my career, I wouldn’t have made the right call, and instead would’ve subjected my exhausted crew to another gruelling challenge. We had fulfilled the brief and our client was happy, so if I had pushed for it, it only would’ve been for my own fulfilment. We had what we needed, and we were content with that.

Post-Production

Upon returning to London (and putting our feet up for a bit!), we dove straight into the edit, and the Long Story Short team delivered multiple versions to Finix in time for their public launch in July. Coincidentally, we launched our own social media channels that week and were proud to share Finix’s launch video as our first project.

I had a challenge ahead of me when I decided to take on this film - I wanted to put Long Story Short on the map. Through an incredible effort from my team, and an amazing collaborator in our client Damien, I’m proud to say we accomplished that goal. We still have some way to go, of course - we’re a scrappy, small team learning as we go. But every new endeavour comes with a mix of risk and reward, and that means we’ll build an office on the side of a mountain in order to get the shot you need for your film.

“When I saw the final edit … it worked amazingly well. High energy, funny, informative, just as I had hoped for. Jamie and his team led a 3-day shoot in Snowdonia that was tough going, but we got the results needed, and I would definitely use them again."