Back in December 2014, we worked with The Weather to produce a Christmas E-Card video for The Glengoyne Distillery. The film would be hosted on their Facebook page and sent out to the Glengoyne Family on the run up to Xmas.
Glengoyne pride themselves on their traditional methods of distilling whisky. Back in the day, they used to operate 365 days a year, but some traditions are worth changing. Today, staff close down the distillery on Christmas eve to allow for all workers to enjoy Christmas Day at home with their families. The film we produced for Glengoyne shows two workers, Duncan and Billy closing down the warehouses and stills as the night before Christmas draws in.
We had one day to shoot the video, with lots to pack in. Luckily, The Weather had provided the crew with a very detailed storyboard and shot list. We followed Duncan and Billy around the site, roughly shooting in chronological order to maintain consistency in the transition from daylight to dusk, although some scenes that were shot earlier in the day were colour corrected in post (day-for-night).
We wanted to capture accurate sounds from within the distillery for video. Although you’d think that was simple enough, it can be difficult to record clean audio is such a noisy environment, what with all the machinery surrounding the crew and tours groups passing through hourly. The sound effects used in the film are a combination of audio recorded on site, some foley recorded later at our studio and other samples gathered from online libraries.
It was always our intention to use the Silent Night carol as our music track; we had originally planned to have one of the stillman whistling the tune. The version heard in the film performed by the United States Army Chorus, was to be a temporary track for timing purposes, however, we felt the tone was perfect and the performers were kind enough to give us permission to use their track.