Through Every Season

The brief was a wedding reception that felt entirely immersive: an animation projected onto the buildings of Belcombe Court, and a soundscape that filled the reception venue around the guests. The client wanted the whole evening to be cohesive with the production design, so rather than bringing a separate idea to the room, we took our inspiration from the designs themselves and built the film's world out of them.

Projected by Knight Light Events across the venue's facades, the woodland becomes the building. The soundscape carries the same forest into the reception, so that guests are standing inside the story rather than watching it from outside.

The film follows a single swallowtail butterfly as it wakes in the root of an old oak and flies out through the enchanted forest. Along its path it meets the animals of the woodland, each one finding the butterfly, keeping it company for a while, and letting it go on. In the final scene the butterfly finds its mate, and the two continue their journey together.

As the story moves forward, the forest moves through the year with it. The butterfly sets out in autumn and flies on through winter and spring into summer, so that its search takes the length of a year and every season brings a different light, a different palette and a different companion.

Autumn

Copper leaves, low sun and mist. A red fox finds the butterfly and walks it on.

Winter

Frost, snow and bare oaks. A tawny owl keeps watch until the stream begins to thaw.

Spring

Bluebells and blossom. A fawn finds the butterfly and lets it go towards summer.

Summer

Deep green and sunlight. The butterfly finds its mate, and the animals it met on the way are there to see it.

The forest opens in copper and gold, with mist hanging between the oaks and the sun low through the canopy. The fox is the first to find the butterfly. It meets it nose to wing, rests beside it in the fallen leaves, and walks it on along the path until the first frost comes in.

The palette cools to silver, white and graphite. The oaks are bare and twisted under snow, and light comes through the trees in long shafts. The owl takes over the watch, gliding down the frozen paths after the butterfly, until the streams begin to thaw and the forest turns towards spring.

The woodland floor fills with bluebells and the branches with blossom. A fawn finds the butterfly among the flowers and makes a way through for it, then lets it go on towards summer.

The forest is at its fullest: deep green, warm and lit from above. Here the butterfly finally finds its mate. The fox and the owl return to see the two butterflies together, before the pair fly on and the journey continues.

To tie the film to the couple, we wove the bride and groom's initials into the story itself. In autumn they are the sky between two arching oaks; in winter, fallen branches lying in the snow. They are part of the forest rather than laid over it, there to be found by the people the film was made for.

It makes the whole evening completely personal: a story about a long search through every season that ends in finding each other.