Filming Australia's Most Sustainable Building - Architecture Video Production

It might sound like a big call, but SBRC is the first and still only Living Building (fully certified across all petals) in Australia. With 10 years since its' unveiling, SBRC has proven to live up to its promises to be water, energy and carbon neutral, socially responsible, equitable, nontoxic and healthy, all the while remaining beautiful, inspiring and educational. It's no wonder Cox Architecture commissioned us to produce this documentary style film. Take a look at the film below and then continue reading to find out how we deliver unique and beautiful architecture video productions for our clients.

Architecture Video Production: How We Do It

The process of creating an architectural film is not at all dissimilar to the art of documentary filmmaking. There is a period of research during pre-production to decide who the relevant voices are that will tell the story. A meeting with the principal architect provides that all aspects of the building are covered, from the time of day that it's best presented, to the way it sits within the landscape, and the features of the building that deliver an exceptional human experience. All of this and more is crucial to the story so it's important that as filmmakers we completely understand the building and its unique design features. Once we understand the building, we can solidify our creative filming and storytelling approach and plan a shooting schedule.

Our filming approach is designed to uniquely capture the building. In the case of SBRC, an intensive drone shoot was critical in showing many of the highlights of the building. The extensive solar panels, roof line and glazing for example were design features that would be best shown from an elevated position. But of course the view from the ground is also important to connect the audience with the building from the human perspective. A combination of static wide shots, gentle tilts, pans and tracking shots deliver an eye level view of the architecture. We chose to place the interviews outdoors, surrounded by the merging of the built environment with nature to engulf the audience in the space around SBRC.

As the filmmaking process continues, postproduction begins by narrowing down the story via the uncut interviews. A few rounds of cuts with client input forms the narrative into a tight micro-documentary. Once we have the story locked, the process of polishing the edit involves adding the b-roll footage, cleaning up the dialogue, background noise removal, adding titles and mixing in music and sound effects. In the case of the SBRC video, several pieces of music were licensed and stitched together, and nature sound effects featuring bird sounds were laid in parts of the video to enhance the overall atmosphere of the film. The final process of postproduction is to colour grade the shots to correct, match and enhance the look of the film.

That's a Wrap!

We hope you enjoyed this architecture video production as much as we loved producing it. If you have a project you'd like to discuss, give us a call on (02) 9188 0835 or send us email here.