5 Star Cases was recently featured on the cult TV documentary series, “How It's Made” (H.I.M.), whose producers, MAJ Productions dispatched a camera crew from Montreal, Canada all the way to Wisbech, Cambridgeshire to film the inner workings of 5 Star's manufacturing operation.
How It's Made is broadcast worldwide to over 180 countries on the Science Channel and in HD on the Discovery Channel, and translated into multiple languages. 5 Star Cases is one of Europe's leading flightcase makers.
It all started when 5 Star's MD Keith Sykes - a big fan of ‘How It's Made' - contacted the production company to see if they might want to look at featuring 5 Star. Knowing that they must be inundated with requests, he was pleasantly surprised to receive a reply the next day from the production director showing great interest!
Rather than base the episode around the general production of flightcases, it was decided to feature a specific 5 Star product and ‘follow' it through its various production steps – from its conception on the drawing board to being loaded into the back of the truck and off to the gig!
A DiGiCo SD9 digital audio mixing console case was chosen, due to the popularity and profile of the brand and as one of the ‘special design' products from 5 Star's extensive portfolio.
The H.I.M. team were already planning a UK production tour and so 5 Star was scheduled in for a day's filming.
The four-person production team, three from Canada, visited the factory and spent a full day shooting HD footage in most of 5 Star's departments. The production team also visited other UK companies being featured in future episodes, including Pilkington Glass, Aardman Animations and the English Pewter Co.
Each 24-minute episode of How It's Made contains four segments each lasting four minutes and 30 seconds, where viewers discover how the selected products – from everyday household objects like toothpicks, compact discs, cereal, fibre optics, chips to common commercial items like airplanes, etc. – are created.
These all have a narration, explaining the making of each product, accompanied by an original soundtrack composed specifically for “How It's Made.”
The filming at 5 Star was followed by a conference call with MAJ Productions in Montreal to discuss and produce the narration for which 5 Star provided a written brief describing the various processes involved. The voice-over was finalised and then checked against time-code on a low resolution pre-production edit, to ensure the correct timing of the narration.
Keith Sykes comments, “It was all very exciting for everyone in the company, and we are extremely proud to be chosen for inclusion in such a hugely popular programme! It strengthens our brand profile and has exposed us to a massive new audience who will be able to appreciate the intricacies of flightcase design and production”..