In the summer of 2020, the Royal Airforce Museum commissioned us to create a reopening video, letting their visitors know that their London and Cosford locations were open to the public.
They asked us to come up with ideas for a video style that would appeal to families, social media viewers and regular museum visitors. The tone needed to have a balance of a serious safety message, but with a lighthearted approach. This reopening video was important as it served as a way to inform their visitors of the new measures in place to ensure public safety.
As the RAF Museum wanted to communicate their message in a family-friendly way, we created a script full of jokes and puns to balance the seriousness out.
In order to maintain authenticity, it was decided that an RAF museum staff member in uniform would present the video, and it would be shot inside one of the RAF Museum hangars.
We filmed on Alexa Arri Mini LF, an exceptional camera often used on blockbuster movies, to ensure that the image quality was superb.
After filming, we then set about combining the video footage with animation to bring the museum to life. We used the idea of paint splashes to animate the planes with cheeky personalities to add to the playful tone of the promotional video.
The museum has life-size cutouts of people depicting the different roles available within the RAF. We came up with the idea of having our presenter start as one of these cardboard cutouts and then magically come to life in a ‘Night at the Museum’ kind of way. This was one of the more tricky effects to pull off, but our animation team took it in their stride and created a convincing look for the character coming to life.