Jewelry
Video Production

Polished metal is a mirror. It does not have a surface of its own on camera, it only shows whatever the room is doing, which means the job is lighting the room rather than lighting the ring. Change one white card two metres away and the whole piece changes character.

Three problems have to be solved at once on every setup, and they pull in opposite directions:

• Metal wants soft, stones want hard. A broad diffused source keeps gold and platinum clean and free of hot blowouts. Brilliance in a diamond comes from small hard point sources that the stone can break into fire. Getting both into one frame is the actual craft, and it is decided per piece, not once for the day.
• Depth of field at macro is paper thin. In stills you can focus stack. In motion you cannot, so any movement has to be designed to keep the part that matters inside a plane you could measure in millimetres. That is why repeatable moves on a motion control slider beat handheld improvisation on a setting or a pave shoulder.
• The camera and the crew are in every reflection. Tents, domes, flags and black cards control what the metal is allowed to see, which makes half of a jewellery setup subtraction rather than addition.

Grading follows the same discipline. A stone that grades a certain colour has to still read as that stone once the film is online, so we grade to the piece in the room rather than to a look applied afterwards.

For high jewellery the logistics carry more risk than the filming. We run the same procedure whether it is one hero piece or a full collection, and it is written into the schedule rather than improvised at the door.

Pieces arrive against an itemised list with your own reference numbers, counted in and signed for by name, then counted out and signed back the same way at wrap. Transit and insurance stay with you and your insurer, which is how brands and underwriters prefer it; if your policy requires a security escort to remain with the stock, that person stays on set for the whole session. The set is closed to the named crew on the call sheet, and nothing is left on a table between setups. Footage of unreleased pieces never travels to a freelancer abroad, because our editors, colourist and CGI team work in the same building as the camera.

Macro is unforgiving. A fingerprint invisible in the hand fills a quarter of the frame at a two to one magnification, and cleaning on set burns the schedule.

What helps most: pieces cleaned and checked immediately before they are packed, gloves travelling with them, and a note of anything that must not be steamed or handled a particular way. Tell us which tags and labels stay on and which come off. If a hand model is booked, send ring sizes in advance, because a ring that turns on the finger rolls the setting away from camera on every take and there is no fixing it in post. Send duplicates of a hero piece where duplicates exist. If hallmarks or a certificate are meant to appear on screen, say so at the brief, since that is a separate lighting setup rather than an extra angle.

Pieces are grouped by what they need from the light rather than by the order of your catalogue. Yellow gold, white metal and coloured stones each get their own state, and moving between those states is the slow part of the day. Filming inside a group is quick once the state is dialled in.

The order that works: hero pieces early while the crew and the eye are fresh, one test frame approved before a run begins, then the group. If you cannot be on set, that test frame comes to you for approval before anything is committed.

Fine jewellery houses launching a collection who need the campaign film, the macro detail cuts and the social edits out of one custody window. Independent designers whose pieces sell on craftsmanship that a static image flattens. Retailers and multi-brand boutiques who need every label on the floor to look like it belongs there. Agencies who would rather buy a studio, a crew and a post team as one operation than assemble three.

Our studio sits in Dubai Investments Park 2, and the crew, editors, colourist, CGI and AI teams are in house. That matters here more than in most categories: unreleased stock does not get couriered around, and a piece that is still in production can be built by our CGI production team from CAD while the physical sample is being finished. Colourway variations across metals and stones are the other case where CGI beats a reshoot, and our AI production team handles environments that cannot be built in the time available.

Related: jewellery photography, product video production, fashion video production, video production. Work samples are at vimeo.com/slsdxb. Send the collection list, the launch date and where the film will run, and a quote comes back in about fifteen minutes.