This project came via an advertising agency who was working closely with a startup Irish whiskey company, branded around the legendary Irish pirate queen, Grace O’Malley. I will very briefly summarise the communication we had ahead of shooting to give some backstory so you can better understand my thinking during the creative process later on.

The initial inquiry was for photography services to capture the night-time illumination of a castle once owned by Grace O’Malley to show the company branding and artwork as it was to be displayed. Additionally I was asked to shoot drone footage of the structure, in the form of a 2 minute birdseye clip rotating around the building. There would be no music, graphics or editing required.

The night itself did as I suspected and rained almost non stop for nine hours from 4pm to when I eventually left an hour past midnight, rendering night-time drone flight impossible.
I prepared the client for this eventuality and we agreed that I could produce a mini advert using what footage I was able to get in order to complete the commission.

During the clear portion of the day and between downpours, I shot detailed up close footage of the monument and the surroundings, still trying to “see” the finished edit in my minds eye by repeatedly listening to the music I intended to use, so I could seek out those shots in person.

My first shot was something I had not fully established at the time, and so I had to settle for a basic river shot I took, which if you’re forced to, you can see that it is somewhat indicative of the color and liquid nature of whiskey, somewhat…

If I had developed this idea at the time, of whiskey-like liquid in the hues of red and brown, I would have shot this in the correct orientation and with more detail. I was lucky I even had this daytime water shot as it was one of the only clips I had of the river before dark.

The following scenes show more of the castle and are punctuated with phrases relative to the monument: “If these walls could talk/what would they say/but more importantly/what would she say.” I came up with this phrase and used it as a guidewire to create a sense of mystery for the rest of the edit. I wanted the viewer to feel as though they were walking around the base of the tower, discovering it, feeling their hand roll along its ancient stone. This is queued with camera movement and some audio effects as minor triggers.

Next up was in fact the only aeriel section of the entire video which consists of a 1/4 rotation of the structure, and then a reverse pan down shot which I edited to imply a daytime-night-time transition in the video. This was not planned but when I “saw” this clip in my head the next day I was fortunate to have shot the footage required to make this feel right. The transition itself is done with a LUT filter mask that is introduced as the camera pans down and also combined with night-time cricket noises which are familiar to many people as only being something that we hear when the sun has gone down.

This is followed by several scenes to contrast the intro, only now showing the castle at night-time, cascaded with the green luminescence of the artificial lighting. The rain wavered from light to heavy every few minutes for the entire evening, and so it was not possible to fly a drone again without serious risk of malfunction. In fact shooting video from the ground became nearly impossible as the strand around the building turned sodden and muddy as the tide came in across the marshland.

I opted to continue taking stills, with the idea that I could animate weather drama into a photograph thereafter. By adding rain, thunder and lightning and some other visual tricks, I was able to bring the castle to life with all the clarity and vibrancy the client hoped for. The flexibility of stills allowed me to enhance and pronounce the font which ran the side of the building, and was perhaps not quite as powerful in person as we we would have hoped.

The last and most important scene in the feature is the reveal of the bottle. I wanted this moment to feel important. Unfortunately I didn’t have a bottle with the updated logo on it to produce something myself at home or at a studio. I did however find a photograph of the bottle on the clients website. I wanted to create the feeling of a bartender, sliding the bottle toward you, bringing it out of the shadow and toward the patron. I mildly achieved this with the use of focus effects and a black layer/shadow mask that comes off the bottle at an angle, like a tapestry being pulled off to one side. I reflected the image downward mimicking a liquid/glass surface, like the castle reflecting on the water that surrounds it. Then flashing it away with a thunder crack while the soundtrack finds its resting note.

I submitted several drafts and the final version was shipped 5 days after shooting to much praise and gratitude from both the agency and the client themselves, which any creative can tell you is as important as the financial reward. We often hang on the feelings of the recipient and I have on several occasions questioned if I should continue in this line of work, based entirely off feedback, or lack thereof. I was invited along to the staff party to launch the product and was able to meet many members of the team and tell them about the cold, wet and windy evening I spent with their brand at a castle on the west coast of Mayo.

Things I learned:

Shoot everything twice.
Listen to your soundtrack on repeat; don’t give your imagination a break.
If in doubt about how a scene is looking on video, take RAW stills.
Visualise the key moments and shoot them, the gaps can be filled in-between.
Prepare your client; bring up every reasonable pitfall, especially weather!
Be open and attentive, work WITH your client, not just for them.
Their business is their baby, handle with care.
I used every piece of software I have to make this work; Lightroom, Photoshop, Final Cut Pro X, even some mobile apps. Never stop learning!