If you’re planning to up sticks and relocate to a new part of the country, it’s probably a good idea to get a sense of the area that you’re moving to—especially if you’re leaving the big city in favour of a more rural habitance, or vice versa. This is what Acorn Property Group wanted to give their prospective customers; a vision of their new lives from the comfort of their internet browser.
Acorn had highlighted five areas of property development that they were keen to showcase on their website: City, Urban Living, Coastal, Rural and SE1. As the videos were to be used as banners that played instantly upon opening a specific webpage, they needed to be short, attention grabbing and visually attractive. Drawing inspiration from recent Airbnb commercials, we pitched the idea of creating content that focused on the tangible everyday experiences of aspirational homeowners.
We figured that the best way to do this was to embark on a rip-roaring tour of the UK, capturing “real” glimpses of “what your life could be like” in these highlighted areas. Time for another classic Storm & Shelter road trip…
Starting in Central London and working our way down to Newquay, Cornwall, our crew spent a day in each area, enlisting the help of local acting talent to play the roles of happy homeowners going about their everyday lives. As it turned out, our homeowners enjoyed rather active lifestyles; our crew walked an average of 11km per day, shooting people brunching, rambling, relaxing, and even surfing.
Wanting to be close to the action—capturing candid moments rather than acted, staged scenes—Lewis (DOP) opted to hand-hold the camera at all times for the whole week. He soon learnt that light grey was a poor choice of t-shirt colour when spending a very hot week strapped into an Easyrig…
The final films pay testament to our ability to organise an inspired amount of activities in a very short time period. More than ten interior locations and twice as many outdoor points of interest were filmed over the course of our five-day trip.
Delivered in 20-second looping edits, the final films have pride of place on Acorn’s new website.
