Audio Visual Content

Wessex Archaeology has an in-house professional production team, who capture beautiful and engaging imagery and create quality videos that tell the stories behind the heritage discoveries. 

Why create archaeological videos?

Moving imagery is far more engaging to a wider audience than text and still images. Some sites lend themselves naturally to video as they require a higher level of promotion. If you want to showcase a project or venue on your website, or release regular information via social media streams, we can help. Short videos or vlogs on a weekly or monthly basis, highlighting the latest stories or discoveries, will engage a wider audience and create a greater following for the project. Some sites lend themselves to a series of videos to host on your own site, or we would be happy to host them for you via our own heritage channel. Our YouTube channel has regular content updates and a wide heritage following.  

If you want a press release for your site we recommend you have a short video made. Many press agencies favour stories that have short animations or videos, as this is "ready made" content they can use directly on their website or on the television. We can help identify which sites are likely to require a high level of press exposure, and recommend collecting video footage as well as quality photographic imagery as part of the recording process. Although for site security reasons, many of these sites cannot be discussed while being excavated, collecting the data during excavation means we have the material to edit into an informative video when the time is right to release the story.

Our Expertise

Wessex Archaeology has been creating video content since 2006. We have dedicated: videographers, sound crew, and video editors, as well as trained TV presenters and oral history experts. We use the latest technology which allows us to capture TV quality audio and visuals. We can draw upon our team of commercially trained UAV pilots to collect addition aerial footage to help put a site or location into a wider landscape perspective. Our in-house animators can create content to incorporate into live footage to help illustrate or enhance the final product. Our expertise even covers editing 360 video! Whatever your projects video needs, from storyboarding to final cut, we can help. 

Video as a heritage legacy product

Many of our clients have sustainability objectives, and require legacy products for their projects, such as a webpage or an on-site information board. Digital legacy content is also on the increase, with video and sound capture becoming key elements in a package of legacy products. Whether you recording a heritage site, or gathering memories as part of a community project, our team has the ability to capture both high quality video and sound, as well as create and incorporate animations. Our Studio team can create engaging and informative short films, aimed at a wide range of target audiences. From the interested amateur, or the general public, to information for students tailored to match the national curriculum. 

Stills photography

Photography is one of the main recording tools for our heritage team and fieldwork archaeologists. Besides creating an archaeological record for the archive, a project often requires a very different level of photographic imagery.

Our in-house photographers take quality photographs, showing important finds recovered from excavations to included in  publications. We have a dedicated studio space, or we can take their studio lighting and equipment out to clients to create images for collection catalogues or even insurance security images. From highly detail close up macro images, to individual items, collections or even whole structures, we can help.

We also create promotional images for use in press releases or for online dissemination of information about a discovery.

More than just an image

Wessex Archaeology also has the in-house capability to create high quality Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) which can be used to enhance a 2D image to bring out the most important, or very faint details, of an object. Our Studio team also undertake photogrammetry, a process which uses multiple images from various angles to create an accurate 3D model of the object. From these models a set of orthographic photographic images can be output, creating an accurate measurable record of the find or place. Both these process can be used as an analytical tool, enabling other specialist as well as the public to examine in detail a virtual copy of the object online.

For more examples of videos from the WA Studio follow the Case Study links below or visit our YouTube site here.

Find out more about our Heritage Interpretation Services here.