Sykes Holiday Cottages: Home of the Staycation

for

Sykes Holiday Cottages

What We Did

Virtual Production

Motion Control

Video Production

Creative Development

Deliverables

Virtual Production facilities
In-house Director
Cinematography and lighting
Set design and construction

The Brief

For this Sykes Holiday Cottages awareness campaign, ABF came to us to solve a simple problem - how do you shoot a variety of UK “staycation” experiences in cold and rainy November? The answer was Virtual Production, meaning we could showcase locations around the country at the height of summer, all in two days and without leaving our studio in Leeds.

Virtual Production

AI

On Set In Our Studio

Cinebot Camera Arm

Creative & Production

Our in-house director worked closely with ABF to produce a storyboard and animatic that locked in the locations we’d need to create as backgrounds for the LED wall in our Virtual Production studio stage. We took inspiration from genuine holiday destinations offered by Sykes to create a selection of handcrafted Unreal Engine environments and generative AI recreations, ranging from a lakeside hot tub, a cosy farmhouse with log burner, a holiday park, and lush rural locations that could accommodate the whole family - grandparents and their dog included!

Each location would be connected in the edit by a continuous sense of camera movement, executed via a mix of handheld, slider and sweeping moves on our Motion Control Cinebot. Shots were captured wider than delivery on RED in 8K, so every take could be reframed for 16:9 and 9:16 and 1:1 social crops.

Post-Production

We continued to support ABF in the edit, offering creative insight from our director and supplying assets used in the production of the VP backdrops. Initially briefed as a social-only campaign, we were delighted to learn that Sykes felt the work cleared the bar for a national multi-channel TVC campaign, uplifting the delivery mid-flight without a single reshoot!

Zero weather windows, zero location bookings, zero miles travelled - the ultimate “staycation” campaign. Never worry about location logistics again.