Video Production

Art Fund's National Art Pass series: In the Frame

The brief was to find five famous ambassadors who could appeal to the wide variety of art lovers, producing an interview and ‘walk-around’ with them at a gallery of their choosing. It was important to us to find ambassadors who were from a variety of creative industries in the UK such as literature, film, music and journalism. We also wanted to make sure we assembled a group of people who could appeal to a broad range of demographics, were diverse, but who were all united in one thing: their love of art.

Penguin Audiobooks on Spotify: Life Changes When You Listen

Most Spotify Premium users have no idea that there is a vast array of audiobooks they have access to. To encourage listeners to take advantage of this, Penguin Audio asked us to create a video and audio campaign to do just that.

The three adverts show someone listening to an audiobook for the first time, being emotionally transported to somewhere better. To achieve this, we used a scene-setting video projection and minimal props to show the environment the person is in and then lighting and simple sound design, motion design and camera techniques to show the change of atmosphere when the audiobook plays.

Penguin's It Begins with a Book

For Penguins 2020 Christmas campaign, we conceived and directed this advert, telling the story of Sandra's love of the classic book, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. By overcoming the stigma attached with reading such a famously difficult text, Sandra felt empowered to be a better mother. This story shows that all change, big or small, can start by reading a book.

This video was an Honoree, Video Ad Shortform at The Webby Awards, 2020

The Picasso Heist, read by Felicity Jones

The Picasso Heist by James Patterson tells the story of a rare masterpiece by Picasso which is about to go on auction. While the whole world watching, a bright art student called Halston Graham sees an opportunity to pull off the crime of the century and steal the painting. Will Halston’s brilliance be enough to outsmart her enemies?

Actor Felicity Jones narrates the audiobook of this novel, and thus we were briefed to produce a video teaser using the Hollywood actor.

Samin Nosrat at Borough Market

Following on from the huge success of her debut book Salt Fat Acid Heat, we were asked to film Samin Nosrat at London's iconic Borough Market to launch her new book, Good Things.

Her enthusiasm for food was truly inspiring.

Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting at the National Portrait Gallery

To excite people about their exhibition, Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting, the National Portrait Gallery asked us to the film the two curators, David Dawson and Sarah Howgate discussing items he used while working.

Michael Sheen reads The Book of Dust

A behind the scenes glimpse of the challenges actors face when recording audiobooks. Here we sat down with Michael Sheen who was recording Philip Pullman's The Book of Dust.

Big Questions with Neil deGrasse Tyson

When relaunching the Penguin Books UK YouTube channel, we decided to change the way Penguin produced the video content, with a new effort to add quality, consistency, and tone of voice to the videos. We also invested in improving the lighting equipment and editing standards and worked hard to make our thumbnails and video titles the most attractive and appealing they could be.

This video launched a flagship series (Big Questions) for the YouTube channel, featuring guests such as Greta Thunberg, Sinead O'Connor and Bernie Sanders.

To date, this video with Neil has had over 10m views.