15 highlights from shooting ‘A Different Perspective of Portsmouth’ documentary
In March 2020, we decided to break the 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.
Furlough, fly high: the idea for our (your) documentary
A Different Perspective also served as a means for us to decentralise our cash flow away from total reliance on commercial work. 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! We began thinking of the project as less of a short film and more of a feature-length documentary movie.
We set about visiting every kind of business and space in the city: coffeeshops, distilleries, charities, community services, entertainment venues, startups, public spots that were virtually vacant, and loads more. Here are some highlights.
Easter weekend aerial photos
One of our first flights during the COVID-19 lockdown took place over Easter. It was the first time we’d seen Portsmouth so empty, and the first time we felt comfortable shooting certain spots that are usually too crowded to fly over.
Behind the Scenes at our Portsmouth Guildhall shoot (April)
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 and behind-the-scenes shooting.
Watch us in action below 👇
Cygnets at Baffins Pond
A follower commented on our Instagram telling us about the new-born cygnets (young swans) at Baffins Pond near the end of April. We’d just broken the 20% mark on our crowdfunding campaign, and Portsmouth City Council had agreed to contribute £2,000 when we reached 25%! Capturing new life felt like an appropriate celebration, and an antithesis to the worrying news cycle.
Behind the Scenes at our Southsea Castle shoot (May)
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.
‘Costa del Portsmouth’: our aerial photos of crystal-clear coast make national news
In May, our aerial photos of the crystal-clear waters around Portsmouth — which looked ‘tropical’ thanks to diminished ship traffic kicking up less seabed silt — were featured by national news publications! Posts by LADbible, Bored Panda, Mirror Online, and The Daily Mail featured our bird’s-eye photography.
‘Costa del Portsmouth’ was also a timely example of social media-borne misinformation. We did our best to keep up with and reply to a number of rumours, including:
The ghostwriter of Jeremy Clarkson’s section in The Sun quipped that the vibrant water was the result of an Instagram filter. In theory, that could explain the vibrancy, but not the deeper visibility that reveals the sea floor.
We saw a good number of comments questioning why Victoria Pier looked ‘destroyed’ in a few of the ‘before‘ pictures included in stories published by news outlets. That’s just a glitchy render by Google’s 3D mapping! It’s capturing parts of the pier at their true level, and other parts at the level of the water’s surface. Thus, a weird collapsed appearance.
Many publications cited a reduction in land traffic (cars, trucks, etc.) as the reason the water became so clear. We’re not scientists by any measure, but that seems like a stretch!
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. And they’re just around the corner from the new SSS HQ, which we moved into just before lockdown began.
We spoke to Alan Knight, Cameron McGeehan, and Katie Aris for this part of A Different Perspective. See the behind-the-scenes video below.
Screening with Portsmouth Film Society
We were halfway through May when we began thinking of A Different Perspective as less of a short film and more of a fully-blown documentary project. We started having preliminary talks with Portsmouth Film Society about where we’d screen the feature. We’d previously worked with them to capture aerial shots of their outdoor showings. They’re always a great team to speak to about independent filmmaking.
Behind the Scenes at our Queens Hotel shoot
The iconic Queens Hotel in Southsea has been the canvas for a number of moving messages during lockdown. Rhino Audio Visual have been setting up large projections onto the side of the building, both in support of NHS workers and in memoriam of regular visitors who have lost their lives to COVID-19. Such genuine community engagement deserved a starring spot in A Different Perspective.
Again, shoutout to Billy from Film Crew 4 U for assisting with this BTS video!
The final stint
As we neared the end of May, we felt confident we’d hit our goal. Hundreds of local people were showing an interest in the project. Reactions were overwhelmingly positive. Regional organisations were also throwing their weight behind A Different Perspective, with Solent LEP, Portsmouth City Council, and Shaping Portsmouth all pledging support for the film.
Smiles all round!
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.
And yes, you guessed it: much gratitude to Film Crew 4 U for this BTS video!
The finished product!
No, this wasn’t the point where we wrapped up A Different Perspective and called ‘done!’ on the documentary.
Sara and Mike finished up an entirely different project.
Having a baby!
Interview: filming with Becky from StartUp Disruptors
About a month after baby George was born, we really were starting to wind down filming. We could so easily keep going forever — storytelling is what led us into the world of aerial cinematography and drone photography, after all. Any creative will relate to the struggle of knowing when to stop. We managed to rein in our perfectionism and excitement, fortunately, and now we’re beginning to edit!
We realised we’d yet to share any interview snippets on social media. It was all behind-the-scenes videos or still photos at the point when we moved into the editing room. We won’t be including interviews in an uncut fashion in A Different Perspective, but they’re great content for sharing online. Here’s a chat we had with Becky Lodge from StartUp Disruptors:
FPV: Cascades Shopping Centre and Gunwharf Quays
When we visited Cascades Shopping Centre, one of the most intriguing sights we shot featured mall staff laying down 3km of floor tape to enforce social distancing regulations. We also took the opportunity to fly inside some of the stores, filming shopkeepers preparing for their reopenings! We used our smaller FPV (first-person view) drones for this — perfect for indoor drone work.
Busy crowds, tight paths, and very few ideal spots for take-offs and landings make shopping centres notoriously difficult places to fly drones. So when Gunwharf Quays offered us the chance to fly around freely during lockdown, we were ecstatic!
We used one of our FPV cinewhoops to get some truly unique fast-paced shots. A GoPro mounted to the FPV drone captured the video, and we used ReelSteady to stabilise the results.
The final footage looked incredible — especially when we cut it together with cinema-grade clips from our higher-end drones and ground cameras. Gunwharf used the videos on social media as part of their relaunch campaign.
Documenting Go Create Care’s incredible work
For our 15th and final highlight — and our most recent shoot at the time of writing — we’ll let the person we interviewed do the talking. This is, after all, a project about other people’s voices. Go Create Care, a vocational work-based skills service for adults with autism and mental health issues, wrote this:
“Go Create was invited to feature in a documentary telling positive stories about people helping each other during the COVID period. We told the story of how, with support from Portsmouth City Council, parents, carers, and a wonderful staff team, we were able to remain open throughout the lockdown period and support the individuals who attend Go Create.
“Our shop sales have also increased 525% on last year, enabling us to be in a position to offer more paid employment contracts. Michael and Lauren from Solent Sky Services were so enthused in helping both staff and individuals at Go Create tell their stories. A big thank-you, and well done to everyone involved.”
We can’t wait to share Go Create’s story through A Different Perspective.
And that’s where we’re at, as I write this. The scriptwriting, editing, and reshoot phase is underway. As requests for commercial work begin filling our inboxes once again, we’ve begun working with a wider pool of talent to drive A Different Perspective towards the finishing line. We may be busier than ever, but we’re also more inspired than ever.
We have solid plans to wrap post-production and move onto distribution very soon.
We can’t wait to share this documentary with you — this passion project; this labour of love; this film that’s as much yours as it is mine. And we’re excited to use it as a driver to bring about more good, and more positivity.