SANDSTORM FILMS ADVERT I SEMENT FE ATURE .
THE INSIDE SCOOP With food shoots in particular – never mind ones involving ice cream – time is of the essence. There are no precious seconds to waste offloading files, and with the Samsung Portable SSD X5, you won’t have to
VIEW FROM THE TOP The Sandstorm Films HQ was built on a former dairy farm, and now consists of three studios and a host of production facilities
“People will get in the sauna, have a quick massage, then jump back on set”
pleasurable? We thought, let’s give it a try and have a base in the middle of nowhere. We found it gives you unique benefits – for example, just finishing a shoot and seeing a sunset.” Of course, the location also provides a wealth of options for getting beautiful shots nearby. Ward also explains that shorter days can help keep production costs low, as an alternative to the traditional way of working. “The best shoots are usually pretty relaxed,” Ward states. “We always have a little bit of fun.” All things considered, it’s not hard to understand why clients keep coming back once they have experienced production done the Sandstorm Films way.
Once you hear about the massage therapy offered at Sandstorm Films, you begin to wonder how anyone survives a production without it. The hurry-up-and- wait nature of filmmaking means members of the production team can slip away for a short time, before returning, reinvigorated and ready to work. “On a film set, 45 minutes to an hour isn’t really that long. People will get in the sauna, have a quick massage, then jump back on set. A lot of that time we wouldn’t even know they were gone,” Ward reasons. This ethos of pleasure and enjoyment is at the heart of the team’s choice to try something different. Going against the grain of clinical, cold studios, long hours and lacklustre craft services, it was a quality-of- life choice initially. “In the film industry, hours are exceptionally long, and there’s a culture of ‘we have to get it done, so let’s just do the longest day possible’,” says Ward. “It doesn’t make sense to me. Why not make the production experience more
sandstormfilms.com
31. OCTOBER 2021
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