Survitec Group
Survitec is a global leader in survival and safety solutions. For over 160 years, they have remained at the forefront of innovation, design and application engineering, bringing together best-in-class brands for the commercial marine, defence, aviation, offshore and leisure marine markets worldwide.
The ask: To showcase Survitec’s diverse product range in an exciting and engaging way through photography and video. The content is used to promote their portfolio of market leading brands, such as DSB, RFD, Zodiac and Crewsaver, whose products include life jackets, lifeboats, rigid inflatable boats, fighter pilot anti-G equipment, submarine escape equipment, marine fire-fighting equipment and much more. That content must demonstrate the full capability of these products and reflect the Survitec ethos - thoughtful design and manufacturing to the highest possible standard, cementing Survitec as the most trusted name in critical safety and survival solutions in the air, land and sea.
Our response: We have worked with the Survitec Group for over a decade in an enduring and successful relationship that was key to the formation of North Harbour Productions. It began with Chris Heaney providing still images. Now, North Harbour Productions provide both video and stills for everything from social and online content to advertising and tradeshows.
A detailed understanding of these products, including those in development, is key to our approach. From first to last, meticulous planning is needed for all shoots, which range from marine disasters to battlefield action. With so many different requirements we often use a mixture of studio shoots to produce clean images for training and technical purposes and real-life scenarios that can show the capability of the product in a ‘life-saving’ environment. Flexibility is vital, we use crews of between two and twenty, depending on the scale of the shoot.
The challenges: Our role is to combine dynamic and exciting content with the utmost in safety. An early example of our approach was in promoting their leisure marine life rafts. Before this, rafts had been photographed in a pool or calm marina making it impossible to demonstrate their true capability or create dynamic imagery. Our solution? We hired the RNLI training facility in England, blacked it out to simulate night, added firehose and wind machines and created our very own storm indoors!
Over time the scenarios became bigger and more complex - a downed fighter pilot behind enemy lines, a marine disaster with 35 people in the Irish sea, a terrorist chemical attack in a built-up urban area, fire-fighting in a simulated ship and many more. We work with industry experts to ensure scenarios are ultra-realistic and consult H&S experts to guarantee complete safety.
The result: We continue to promote every aspect of Survitec’s diverse offer through video content and still photography. Our images and videos are used by Survitec globally in many different outputs, including social media, group and brand websites, trade shows, training and advertisements in trade publications.
“I have worked with North Harbour Productions now for 10 years. Every time we pushed our visual boundaries, Chris would always rise to the challenge to help us showcase what we do in an incredibly ambitious fashion. This involved a submariner escaping from a stricken vessel deep underwater, a crew of tactical maritime operators storming a building via a high speed boat entry onto the docks, to a full scale chemical attack in a city centre. They have never disappointed and their creative insight and attention to detail has been invaluable. Its obvious Chris and the team cares deeply for what they do and this is reflected in the extremely high standard of work. Here’s to another 10 years..”