We delved behind the scenes during the filming of the trailer for Flower Fairies™: The Magical World of Cicely Mary Barker to see what goes into producing a video like this.

For the Flower Fairies trailer, we decided to use a mixture of animation and recorded material, so we called upon animator Sarah Hoyle and videographer Adam Hale for the job. Adam and his assistant came to Watts Gallery to film our Collections Officer Sarah Mercer in the archive room, and we documented the filming. Here's how it went...

The first step in the process is to set up all the equipment. This involves measuring the distance between the subject and the camera to make sure everything is in focus, setting the lighting, and framing the camera. Another important step when filming and photographing old artworks is to check the lighting levels. This is because old pigments can be sensitive to the light, and lights that are too bright can damage the artworks. To make sure the lighting is at a safe level for the works, Sarah uses a nifty device called a Lux Meter, which measures the amount of light which an object is exposed to.

Usually, special effects are added to a video during the editing stage. However, Adam decided to add some in-camera, which gave the footage an extra magical feel. By getting the light at a specific angle into the lens, he was able to produce a purple flare of light in the camera frame.

Then it was time for filming! Adam began with some over-the-shoulder footage of Sarah Mercer handling the artworks, using a very heavy camera.

Then we moved to some more face-on angles, using different objects.

Finally, we ended the filming using a very interesting piece of equipment. This is a telescopic macro lens. It's used for filming really small things, really close-up. As you can see in the pictures above, the lens is only about an inch away from the object that is being filmed. However, as the lens is also wide-angle, it's able to pick up a surprisingly large area.