Production · Post · Brand
In partnership with Lifestory
Pinnacle
A series of films that added value well beyond the brief.
Production · Post · Brand
In partnership with Lifestory
A series of films that added value well beyond the brief.
01 The brief
Pinnacle design, supply and install premium furniture, fixtures and equipment for schools - not the rote environments where chairs and desks line up to force attention, but the kind where thinking about how a space looks and feels affects how students experience learning.
They needed a film that made that argument visually, stories told first-hand to the people making procurement decisions - the bursars, business managers and heads. We'd already worked with Lifestory and Pinnacle on an animated brand piece - live action was the natural next step.
02 What we did
After a recce, we decided to film over two days. On the first we travelled to Pinnacle's Sussex offices where we did key interviews with the team. We also took a tour of their warehouse and the design room where interiors experts work through room plans with dollhouse-sized furniture and fabric swatches. We spent the second day at Oxford International College Brighton, part of the Nord Anglia Education group - a serious independent college where Pinnacle had specified and fitted learning environments across the site.
We lit the interviews to work with the natural light coming through the windows - a warm, inviting feel we carried across both days using open face sources and quarter CTO. The idea was to let the spaces speak, rather than force a sterile look on them.
The school footage did exactly that - though it was a reminder of how important a recce can be. The science labs sat on the top floor of a large building, so we had to rent in some FOs - giant stands that let us push light in to imitate the sun coming naturally through the windows. We've since bought a pair to keep in-house.
We were able to capture the brand-new science labs, the modern and relaxed common areas, cosy dorm rooms and the students visibly thriving in the spaces Pinnacle had helped create. The goal was a film that made a superficial procurement decision feel less like adding things to a basket and more like strategising the next decade of learning at an institution.
03 The result
The original brief was for a single company film, but we left Sussex with enough material for three. As well as the briefed brand film, we delivered a school-specific edit and a third cut talking directly to the contractors, from a story that emerged naturally in the interviews. The additional edits were delivered beyond the original scope, giving Pinnacle a broader asset library and a clearer sense of how they could adapt their story to different audiences.