Lights, Camera, All Aboard — Railway 200 Community Flashmob

Every successful shoot starts long before the camera rolls. For this project, pre-production was about building relationships, understanding the participants, and making sure every logistical detail was in place ahead of a complex, multi-location day.

We worked closely with COPC's team to understand the scale and spirit of the event — 100+ participants, many from SEND provisions, performing an eight-minute choreographed routine in a busy public square. That context shaped every decision we made. We carried out location recces at Guildhall Square, Portsmouth Harbour Station, Cosham Station, and Highbury Campus, and handled permit applications for filming on council land and at the station locations.

Drone flight planning came next — agreeing a safe take-off and landing zone with location stakeholders was essential given the number of people involved. We also designed and distributed consent forms to all participants and parents and guardians, briefed students on how to use the small participant-held cameras they would carry on the day, and coordinated directly with Great Western Railway on the content they needed as part of the partnership.

The shoot followed the full arc of the day, beginning at 8:30am at Highbury Campus where we filmed students getting ready — hair, make-up, costumes, and last-minute rehearsals — with candid interviews woven throughout. It was the kind of behind-the-scenes footage that gives a film its heart.

From there we followed the group on their walk to Cosham Railway Station, filming the journey handheld before boarding the train for the short hop to Portsmouth. The onboard experience was a key part of the brief — COPC had built a railway travel training session into the day, and we made sure that story was captured as it unfolded.

On arrival at Portsmouth and Southsea Station, our drone was in the air capturing the scale of 100+ participants disembarking together. By 11:30am the group had reached Guildhall Square, and our static wide-angle camera was in position for the full eight-minute performance while the drone provided simultaneous aerial coverage. Throughout the entire day, participant-held cameras were rolling — giving us an authentic, first-person perspective that no crew camera could replicate.

Post-production brought together a rich variety of footage — wide performance shots, drone aerials, behind-the-scenes material, travel documentary footage, and the participant-held camera perspectives — into a cohesive, emotionally engaging set of films.

We graded the footage carefully to ensure consistency across very different shooting conditions, from the warm indoor light of the campus to the bright open sky above Guildhall Square. Audio was mixed to cleanly separate the performance music, ambient crowd sound, and interview dialogue — each needing a different touch.

But this project didn't end at the edit suite. We returned to COPC to interview the students after the event, capturing their reflections on what the day had meant to them. Those conversations were quietly powerful, and they gave the mini-documentary its emotional core — a final chapter that turned event coverage into something with genuine lasting resonance. Finished assets were delivered to both COPC and Great Western Railway.