Iceland Parliament Hotel, Curio Collection by Hilton

We were commissioned by our friends at Hilton Worldwide to produce a content package for their Iceland Parliament Hotel as part of their ‘Style the Stay’ campaign.

This was our second project for this campaign and followed on directly from our Aleph Rome shoot a month prior. The purpose of this content suite was to showcase the unique characteristics and features of Hilton’s Curio Collection properties, highlighting the key features and amenities of each hotel through a first-person, experiential lens.

The Parliament is a popular destination for business travellers, boasting a five star restaurant and world class conference and event space. These elements became the focus of our creative; to showcase the Parliament experience to prospective businesspersons and companies considering where to stage their events and/or stay whilst working in Iceland.

We were commissioned for this project and the Reykjavik Konsulat simultaneously and opted to shoot the properties back-to-back.

Pre-Production

We tapped into our extensive network of UK based freelancers to assemble a dream team of our most trusted creatives, with Ether/Awe’s producer team handling all of the pre-production and logistics. The same crew was utilised across both the Reykjavik Konsulat and Iceland Parliament shoots, with us staying in Reykjavik for a week to shoot both hotels.

The casting process was incredibly rigorous, with us supplying over one-hundred UK based candidates to Hilton for select their five favourite candidates from. Once the talent was selected, our stylist Sally Minns (of Good Day Studio) pulled together over sixty outfits for the client to review and approve.

Equipment was supplied by Reykjavik based kit house KUKL and background talent was supplied by local talent agency Grounded Creative Studios.

Ether/Awe’s producers, our director Ross Dixon (of Third Aspect), and several HoDs flew out to Reykjavik one week prior to filming to assess the logistics of shooting at the properties, refine the creative plan and shot list, and assemble a shooting schedule which would ensure minimal impact on guests and staff at the hotel.

Production

The cast and crew flew back out to Reykjavik two days prior to the commencement of shooting on the Parliament project.

Talent was utilised to accentuate and prettify the environments and amenities, with the master wide being the focus of each sequence. Scenes were crafted with this in mind, with authenticity and immersion taking centre stage. Real Hilton team members were utilised to ensure that the authentic Hilton experience was encapsulated. Production design was kept to a minimum, primarily being used to make spaces appear lived in.

Unlike the Rome Aleph project – where we utilised a two camera setup – we opted for a single-camera approach, pairing the Arri Alexa Mini with Sigma cine prime lenses. The Alexa was primarily rigged on a steadicam and slider to ensure that movement was used throughout, with static tripod shots being used sparingly.

This was a shoot only project for Ether/Awe and the edits were handled by Don Broida and his post-production team in Los Angeles.

Our on-site DIT would make selects of the best takes during each shooting day and upload proxies to a dedicated Google Drive folder for the LA based edit team to download and begin assembling the edits. The full resolution footage was backed up onto four separate SSD hard drives; one of which remained in Iceland, one of which flew back to LA with the agency, and two of which flew back to the UK with our producers.

This was our second project on the Style of the Stay campaign and helped solidify Ether/Awe as one of Hilton’s preferred suppliers in Europe.

We were subsequently approached to produce content packages for four of their London hotels for their ‘Stay Tours’ campaign, which followed immediately after production had wrapped on the Reykjavik Konsulat – which commenced filming the day after Parliament had wrapped. This resulted in Ether/Awe working with Hilton for five months consecutively across seven of their properties.

The final content is currently being used to promote the Hilton Iceland Parliament on the property’s website, across their socials and on billboards across Iceland.