We were proud to produce the ‘Back Where It Belongs’ films, celebrating and promoting the return of the newly-restored Spurn Lightship to Hull Marina as part of the wider Hull Maritime project.
The films utilise many of Nova’s creative skills and is a great example of the end-to-end concept and production approach that has established Nova as one of the North’s leading video productions companies. Our qualified and experienced team have the in-house skills to deliver creative concepts, project management, scripting, casting, research, shooting, animation and post-production to the highest standards at lower cost than our London-based competitors.
The brief from Hull Maritime for this project was to produce three films for social media, each less than a minute in length, to tell viewers that the Lightship was open again. The films needed to give a taste of life on the historic vessel, which once stood sentry in the Humber Estuary, shining a light to keep shipping safe from the treacherous shifting channels of the river, ensuring the safe passage of mariners to the port of Hull.
Our proposal was to show the lightship crew on board the Spurn sometime during the heyday of the fishing industry in the 1950s or 60s. We wanted to show their routines and daily life whilst also capturing some of the strange magic of their job and location – the comings and goings of shipping and the unusual sights of a life at sea – northern lights, shooting stars, whales and more.
The challenge was to create this on board the restored Spurn itself in its mooring at Hull Marina. This meant shooting carefully to avoid any museum signage inside the vessel, and ensuring that all outdoor shots avoided the boats and buildings in and around the Marina. The scenes we shot picture the crew looking out to sea, checking charts, playing cards, drinking tea, lying in bunks reading.
Advised by Hull Museums staff, we carefully chose props and costume that were appropriate to the period and the working life of the crew – duffel coats and bobcaps, binoculars, an old Roberts radio, charts, chipped enamel mugs, 60s newspapers, corned beef sarnies, playing cards.
Our friends at Yorkshire Film Archive helped us find footage from the period; Nova cinematographer Callum Mitchell created an evocative animated top and tail for the films that quickly establishes the Spurn Lightship in its original location; film-effect treatments and grade create a style and atmosphere appropriate to the mid-20th-century atmosphere while Nova’s poetic script characterises the Spurn Lightship itself:
Imagine me out there, long before you were born – no phones, no internet, no telly – just me to show the way…
Read by Hull-born Brian Hossack, a member of Hull Truck’s Act III group for older people, the script suggests the voice of a grandparent telling stories of how life used to be, enhanced with sounds of old shipping forecasts, the sea, seagulls and more.
It’s great to know that in their own way the films themselves play a role in Hull’s maritime history.
From the City of Culture bid film, through Wykeland’s regeneration of the Fruit Market, the development of C4Di, the famous Spencer Tunick Sea of Hull event, throughout Hull 2017,the strange times of COVID and back into the exciting Maritime Hull activities – Nova is proud to continue being the film company the city chooses when the message and emotions really matter.
