Is it this time already? It feels like only a few weeks ago the Nova office was gearing up for another busy year.
2024 really has gone by in a flash. So before we find ourselves in the thick of 2025, here’s a look back at some of Nova’s highlights from this year (a word of warning: there are quite a few).
An award winning series
When we approached the Yorkshire Post with the idea of collaborating on a project showcasing some of the region’s finest crafts people, we hoped to simultaneously showcase our own journalistic ability and produce a set of beautiful films.
Meet the Makers, a six part series which ran from May to June in the Yorkshire Post’s Weekend Magazine, was described by James Mitchinson, the newspaper’s Editor In Chief as “Quite possibly the most goosebump-inducing work I’ve seen produced in the name of local journalism.”
The project went on to be named as the winner in the Press Gazette’s Future of Media in the Online Video (specialist/regional) category with judges remarking: “These were beautifully shot videos which were a delightful way to showcase fascinating local businesses. Exceptionally well produced.”
New clients and extra capacity
In May 2023, on the back of a couple of years of growth we decided to take on another camera operator to ease the burden on our lead shooter Cal.
Lydia spent most of her first six months shadowing and assisting on shoots but by the start of 2024 she’d more than served her apprenticeship and was ready to work on client commissioned jobs.
The extra shooting capacity was crucial throughout the year as new clients including Reality Solutions, Park Holidays and Neill & Brown meant double shoot days were a regular occurrence.
An additional service
What’s more, Lydia’s presence on the team has added an extra string to Nova’s bow – we’re now able to offer our client’s photo as well as video.
Lydia studied photography at Falmouth, a leading university in the field, and has already shot multiple events for our clients and campaign imagery for Hull Fostering.
Get in touch to find out more.
Expanding our horizons
While our core client work remains in Hull and East Yorkshire, we’ve increasingly found ourselves traveling further afield for shoots across the UK and beyond:
The West Yorkshire Combined Authority commissioned us to create a film exploring the appetite and need for a tram system in the region—a project that took us to Leeds, Bradford, and Manchester. During the summer months, a new partnership with Park Holidays had us shooting in Derbyshire, Lancashire, North Yorkshire, and Essex. We’ve also supported the excellent team at H&H on projects with their clients in Stratford-upon-Avon and Amsterdam, and we traveled to London with Future Humber for Innovation Zero.
Telling the story of our region
Although we’re delighted to be spreading our wings, we love nothing more than telling the stories of the people of the Humber, and there was plenty of that in 2024. We explored the social histories of Hull City fans, Beverley Road during the Blitz, and life on the Spurn Lightship. We worked with Back To Ours and The Encyclopedia of Us on a film for the city council, exploring what ‘culture’ means to the people of Hull. And staff at North Lincolnshire Museum and Beverley Art Gallery told us about their favourite objects from their collections.
Social value
We feel incredibly fortunate to be able to make a living doing something we love, and we’re always mindful of giving back to our community.
Back in January, Nova selected the HEY Smile Foundation as its charity of the year for 2024. Through this partnership, Nova produced six pro-bono films for Smile, donating a total of £20k in-kind value and Nova’s producer, Barney, raised over £1.2k by running the Manchester marathon.
We also created a film for Giggbuddies, an organization, introduced to us by Cal through his regular volunteer work, that provides social opportunities for young people with disabilities.
The film follows a day in the life of Alastair, a young man with Angelman Syndrome who uses prompts on his tablet to communicate his thoughts and feelings. Alastair also happens to be an Ella Street neighbour so it was great to work with him and his mates to create something to reflect his personality and highlight the great work Gigbuddies do.
A new documentary
Are you still with us? We did warn you.
2024 was a big year on the documentary front with our second feature length film premiering at London’s doc’n roll film festival in early November.
Burning Bridges tells the explosive story of Paul Burwell, an artist who challenged boundaries and pushed to the most extreme edges of creativity. Through rediscovered archive footage, sketchbooks, diaries and photographs, along with interviews with his friends, family and contemporaries the film follows Burwell’s career from its beginnings in London, through to international acclaim with art collective The Bow Gamelan Ensemble and his later years living in an old boat house near the banks of the River Hull.
The film will play at Hull Truck on January 25th as part of Hull Independent Cinema’s winter programme.
Babies, birthdays and new houses
And finally, away from work there’s been plenty going on for the Nova team too: Lydia ran her first 10k, Cal moved house, Lina and Al turned the big 30 and bigger 50 respectively and the birth of Vincent made Matt a grandad and Barney a dad for the first time.
Phew.
It’s been an incredibly rewarding year both personally and professionally for us all at Nova and we can’t wait to get going again in 2025.
