Phoenix Safe Company is one of the oldest UK manufacturers of safes and security products and can trace its history back to Liverpool in 1799. We have been working closely with the company as their retained marketing agency providing them with our full range of marketing and creative services.
This particular project was for Product Photography to produce product images for their new and updated range of safes. These would be used on their website and corporate brochure.
Our brief was to create a range of images that would provide a greater insight into each product and its associated features. We also planned to include angles of construction to provide a sense of scale whilst also focusing on the craftsmanship and typical contents of a safe.
Challenges
As the majority of the safes are large and VERY heavy this product photography project had to be completed on location at the Phoenix Safe offices in Bootle, Liverpool.
One challenge that we encountered was to ensure that the perspective angle on each shot, regardless of product size, had to remain constant in order to retain a sense of consistency when each image was placed next to each other in a brochure or on the website.
Another issue for us was dealing with the sheer weight of some of these safes. This was a forklift operation for some items, because of this additional set up of each item the overall shoot lasted 2 days.
Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.
Solution
On arriving on site and then being shown to the location, we were engrossed in tales of how the warehouse was a location shoot for the film 51st State featuring Samuel L. Jackson. Sure enough, when we reached the warehouse we could see the remains of the blood splatters on the ceiling which was left like that by the pyrotechnics film team.
This led on to even more discussions about the Phoenix Safe claim-to-fame list, such as Phil on EastEnders had a Phoenix safe in his garage. The boss on MI5 on Spooks had a Phoenix safe in his office and in a recent Tom Cruise film a Phoenix safe was used in a war room scene. Pretty impressive.
Back to work – As this wasn’t our normal studio we had some rearranging and setting up to do before the shoot. The safes were of varying sizes, from 30cm tall, all the way up to 7ft tall! In preparation for the heavy items and also to accommodate a remote studio, we visited the site prior to the day, to arrange the exact details of equipment required and location of kit. We had to consider things such as the camera height and angle depending on the safe that was being photographed to overcome the issues of varying angles on previous photo shoots which had taken place.
Results
In summary, this was another successful product photography project under our belt. The client was happy that we overcome our challenges and as a consequence of our success, we were requested to produce a series of product videos at a later date. We handed over a full selection of high and low resolution images to the client to be used in all future marketing materials, on the website and sent to the global network of distributors and retailers.
