‘A Different Perspective of Portsmouth’, our documentary about the city, its people, and lockdown life
An uplifting documentary that captures the resilience of key workers, business owners, and local residents in Portsmouth, as the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdowns changed everything. The story of an island city coming together in crisis.
In March 2020, we decided to break the gloomy news cycle. Social feeds and TV screens were dominated by stressful headlines and exhausting statistics. Aside from the love shown for key workers, few human stories shone through the facts and figures. So we started planning ‘A Different Perspective of Portsmouth’ — a documentary that would capture the global pandemic through the lens of local voices.
Watch the Documentary:
Stories from A Different Perspective of Portsmouth
Furlough, fly high: the idea for our (your) documentary
A Different Perspective helped us decentralise our cash flow away from total reliance on commercial drone work. Like everyone else, we were in completely uncharted waters, and had no idea how lockdown would affect the drone industry.
The absence of crowds would make it possible to fly in places we wouldn’t usually be able to, but would that same lack of custom prevent businesses from spending on aerial photography or surveys? This was a risk we needed to negate.
Plus, with half our team furloughed, we were limited in some of the jobs we could take on anyway — particularly projects that called for a minimum of three people (a pilot, a spotter, and a cinematographer).
We started a crowdfunding campaign, for four key reasons:
Sustaining our small family business through uncertain times
Documenting our hometown and its people during an historic event
Gifting contributors beautiful aerial photos of the places they most missed while under lockdown
Making the project fully scalable, so our ambition and work could grow in tandem with the success of the crowdfunding campaign
£5,000 in donations later, the campaign had proven to be a huge success! That’s how the project evolved from a short film into a feature-length documentary!
Behind the Scenes
Behind the Scenes at our Portsmouth Guildhall shoot (April 2020)
It’s one of the most integral buildings of Portsmouth’s past, present, and — undoubtedly — its future. Portsmouth Guildhall was one of our first ports of call for shooting A Different Perspective, and not just because it looks stunning from above; it’s one of our city’s key centres for entertainment, innovation, and discourse. Mike took on piloting duties while Jan controlled the drone camera, and Billy from Film Crew 4 U led on spotting.
Behind the Scenes at our Southsea Castle shoot (May 2020)
Once again, our gratitude to Billy and Mark from Film Crew 4 U for capturing a behind-the-scenes view of our flight over Southsea Castle. We took off and landed from within the moat surrounding the historic fortification. The symmetry of the building is always incredibly striking from above, and seeing the water lapping at Southsea’s shoreline mere metres away makes for some interesting compositions.
Behind the Scenes at our Pompey in the Community shoot
Much of the world’s focus and resources have been directed towards health organisations since the pandemic began, and suitably so. But we wanted to document how other charities and NPOs were faring during lockdown.
Pompey in the Community — an independent charitable trust with a focus on providing education and coaching — were a perfect fit.
We spoke to Alan Knight, Cameron McGeehan, and Katie Aris for this part of A Different Perspective.
Behind the Scenes of our Portsmouth Distillery shoot
Another local business who caught our attention for their COVID-19 counteractions: Portsmouth Distillery, the rum- and gin-makers based inside Fort Cumberland in Eastney. They poured their time and resources into making hand sanitiser at a time when the initial coronavirus panic saw shoppers (and in some cases, price gougers) sweeping the shelves of every last bottle.
