We do lots of sand art on beaches, but recently our professional sand sculptors Richard Spence and Mark Wilson travelled down to London to make a sand sculpture in a basement. Creative agency bigdog asked us to bring our sand sculpting skills to the capital for an advertising campaign they were making for use in financial services marketing. Through the magic of studio trickery, our sand sculpture of a house was shot against a screen then made to look like it was on a beach!
Richard Spence and Mark Wilson travelled down from our studio in West Yorkshire; Rich drove down, leaving at 4am but Mark let the train take the strain. They arrived on a beautiful day in bustling London, found a parking space right outside the Tapestry studio in the creative hub of Soho – an achievement in itself – and set about unloading all the sand required and getting it into the basement. Thankfully there was a large team on hand to take all the buckets of sand down the stairs and it was all done within ten minutes – a personal best for the team at Sand In Your Eye! It’s great when we can get some help onsite with all the heavy lifting and makes the job run so much smoother.
With all the hard work done, Rich and Mark set about compacting the sand and roughing out the sculpture of the house ready for a long day the next day. They retired to their hotel and one of London’s finest hostelries and watched Leeds go out to Derby over a few (expensive) pints. Bright and early the next morning, the job started in earnest. As well as the images for the final advert, Tapestry wanted to film a time lapse and take photos as the sculpture emerged from the sand, we think you’ll agree these fantastic production shots by Danny Bird make our sand sculptors look quite heroic!
The sand house ended up looking great, you could almost move into it! But it couldn’t stay forever and the clients took great pleasure in helping to dismantle it. All the sand was swept up and carried back up the stairs, leaving the studio spotless – it was as if we’d never been there. The only thing delaying departure was a charity cricket match taking place on the street outside the studio – we had to wait for it to finish before we could set off!
With a green screen as a backdrop, you could make a sand sculpture, or an ice sculpture or one of our carved pumpkins in a studio and make it appear like it’s anywhere in the world. We don’t have to go all the way to London either to do this, you could hire our studio near Hebden Bridge and either bring your own team or use some very talented photographers and film makers we know, who can bring their own magic. Hebden Bridge, like Soho is a creative hub, it has a lot of holiday accommodation and is well known for it’s pubs and restaurants, making it a very affordable and pleasant alternative to shooting in a big city.
Many thanks to the incredibly talented teams at bigdog and Tapestry, they were really pleased with the finished sand sculpture, and were very hospitable and friendly, we couldn’t ask for nicer people to work with.
