The Tulip Story
20 minute documentary
Each year Arundel Castle plant over 150,000 spring bulbs that contributes to their yearly tulip festival extravaganza. But why are tulips so special? How have they become a staple of the english springtime garden? And where do they even come from?
In this 20 minute doccumentary, we explore the process behind the Castle's tulip festival, alongside guest advice from Kew Gardens and RHS Wisley.
Project Origins
As an Arundel based production company, and passionate about true stories and documentary filmmaking, we thought we'd join the Arundel tulip bandwaggon and contribute to the spring display. So we did just that, and curated a little art exhibition to run side by side in our Arundel studio.
The film played throughout the festival period and provided lots of useful insight to garden lovers and continues to play on youtube for those who couldnt be there in person.
The Process
Over three shoot days we visited Arundel Castle, Kew Gardens and RHS Wisley. Each of the gardens contributed in different ways. Arundel's head gardener Martin Duncan provided his expert advice and charm, putting his years of knowledge to the forefront of the screen as he showcases his magnificent display of spring excellence. Faye Adams from Kew Gardens provided a wealth of scientifc backtsory to the tulip and our guests from RHS wisley offered some tips and tricks for home gardeners.
After filming, we took to the edit and over a week of selecting the perfect clips and commentary we had our final film. At the start of every edit process we like to start by building a timeline based on audio widgets. This enables us to begin constructing a narrative for the film. Once this is solidified, everything else slots into place.
We loved working on this project. It gave us the opporunity to deep dive into a specialist subject and also provide insight for all types of gardeners and home growers. Projects like this are special and that's why it's really important for us to push our creative practice into new areas such as documentary and factual content.
