Pure Senses ice bath shoot: shot on Thursday, delivered by Monday

On Thursday 1 October we were back at Pure Senses, the day spa at Mount Pisa near Cromwell, to shoot their new ice bath. The brief was a full contrast therapy session: sauna, ice bath, cave shower and warm-up, with a model and the spa's own yoga teacher leading him through it as the trainer. Pure Senses wanted photos for their website and advertising, and we added a vertical reel from the same session, ready to post.

The edited photos were with the client on Saturday. The reel followed on Monday. This is how the day was planned and how it came together that fast.

One camera for the stills and the reel

We shot everything on our Sony FX30: the stills as RAW files and the video in 4K, held vertically so the reel runs at full resolution on Instagram and TikTok instead of being cropped from a wide frame. Running one camera for both means the photos and the reel share the same lens, the same light and the same colour from the start, which makes the grade much easier to match later.

Before anything was shot, the model and the trainer signed image releases. That covers Pure Senses to use their photos and the reel in paid advertising, not just on their own pages. It is a five-minute job on the day and a real headache to chase afterwards.

Following the session in order

We shot the session in the order a guest would do it, so the reel tells the story without any narration. It starts in the sauna, with the heat and the low warm light. Then out to the courtyard and into the ice bath, with the trainer coaching his breathing from the side of the tub. After the ice comes the cave shower in the rock grotto, then a warm-up with the trainer, and finally a bit of fun in a pair of fur coats to finish.

The ice bath is where most of the time went. A person can only stay in for so long, so we planned the frames before he got in: wides of the tub and courtyard, the trainer coaching at the rim, and close-ups of his face as the cold hit. Then we worked fast once he was in.

Forty photos by Saturday

We came away with 262 RAW frames. We culled them to the strongest 40, then edited and colour graded each one, and sent the full set to Pure Senses on Saturday 3 October, two days after the shoot.

The day was overcast, which is good for skin but hard on skies, because a bright grey sky can turn into a flat white sheet behind your subject. Shooting RAW kept the detail in the clouds, so we could pull them back in the edit and keep the courtyard looking like a real place rather than a studio.

The reel by Monday

The reel at the top of this page went to the client on Monday 5 October. It is just under a minute long, cut on the beat of the music, and finishes on the Pure Senses sign at the grotto.

We built it to sit next to the behind the scenes reel from September. It uses the same script titles and the same colour, and ends on the same sign, so on Pure Senses' feed the two read as one series rather than two different jobs. We also matched exposure shot by shot. Outdoor footage on a bright day jumps around as clouds move and the camera turns towards the sky, and smoothing that out is what stops a fast cut from flickering.

Why the turnaround matters

A spa opening a new space wants to tell people about it while it is new. Photos that arrive a month later miss that window. Shooting stills and video in one session, with one camera and a plan for the edit before the day, is what let us hand over the photos in two days and the reel in four.

It is the same approach we take on all our branded content and photography around Central Otago. For the bigger picture of our work with Pure Senses, see the Pure Senses case study.

If you have a new space, product or service to launch in Queenstown or Central Otago, tell us about it and we will plan a shoot around it.