Swalcliffe Park School is a specialist residential and day school in the village of Swalcliffe, Oxfordshire, for boys aged 11–19 who have needs arising from their Autistic Spectrum conditions.
The school reached out to us to create a warm and engaging virtual tour film, an assignment made more appealing by the beautiful surroundings and friendly staff. Vice Principal Chris Heslip was nominated to be the spokesperson, and despite being a little unsure of what to expect from the filming, having never done any speaking on camera before, he was up for the challenge and did an excellent job.
The first step was working out where each section of the tour would take place, and basically building a mental ‘map’ of the running order to check that each piece would like together effectively. Once we began filming, Chris would cover one area of the school at a time, speaking for around 30 to 60 seconds in each location and covering various key points of importance. We suggested this be done without a script to keep it feeling spontaneous, informal and engaging. Chris simply spoke each section live around 3 times, allowing him to get slicker each time – and us to choose the best take when editing, or stitch different parts of different takes together (which was why we also shot a handful of important cutaways in each location, to cover any joins).
We paired the tour footage with some general beauty shots of the school which we had already filmed for an earlier project with the school (which had conveniently been filmed on a slightly sunnier day) and these also greatly improved the resulting edit. Added to this was some upbeat, subtle music and sound design.
The film was a huge success and is currently welcoming visitors to the Environment page on the school website.
