Arctis x RFI

We were commissioned by our friends at Wooshii to produce two pieces of testimonial content for US based biotech company Thermo Fisher Scientific, focused around their Arctis device and it’s integration into the Rosalind Franklin Institute.

The brief was to capture an interview with RFI director Jim Naismith, as well as supplementary b-roll of the device in situ and the facility in general. The goal of the content was to explore and amplify the key features of the Arctis device and convey how it’s integration into the RFI’s ecosystem has helped to improve the workflow at the facility.

The shoot was carried out over one day at the RFI in Didcot, Berkshire.

For this project, we opted to utilise a skeleton crew and nimble equipment setup to counter the tight and congested spaces. The crew consisted of a self-shooting director, director of photography and sound recordist. For the equipment, we utilised a two camera setup – consisting of the Sony PXW-FX6 and PXW-FX3, with the FX6 being utilised on sticks and the more lightweight FX3 switching between sticks and gimbal for b roll.

For the interview, we opted for high-contrast lighting as opposed to the standard, muted lighting setups that we have been asked to implement on previous shoots. The motivation behind this was to give the video a more intense and dramatic edge and to lend an unconventional aspect to differentiate it from similar content. The goal was to produce something that looked more like a television documentary than a standard corporate testimonial.

The edit was completed by our post-production team at our York studio.

We have produced hundreds of corporate testimonials since our company’s genesis, however with this piece we wanted to push the boat as much as possible. We opted to keep our footage at 50fps as opposed to conforming to 25fps to keep the piece fast paced and to help movement motivate each cut.

We opted against using an overly saturated colour palette, instead boosting the vibrancy to enhance the mid-tones – which worked especially well on the outdoor sequences with the green grass and yellow RFI branding.

For the score, we chose a building piano piece with string accompaniments. The goal of this was to add a sense of excitement to Thermo’s offering and to build a sense of “striving to overcome”.