Houdini - TV Promo

History Channel

“Thanks for everything you guys are the best!!!”
Lara Wickes - Vice President of Production, bpg (Los Angeles)

Two days after the Houdini photo shoot we even had the chance to help make the promo film for History Channel’s mini series, starring the Oscar winning Adrien Brody.

After a photo shoot for History Channel’s Houdini, we worked on the promo for the miniseries

According to the channel’s original plans, the trailer was supposed to be shot in a studio, but they realized that Hungary offered such a wide range of exciting locations that it was worth taking this shoot outside of the studio. The location database of Progressive Productions played an important role in the project. Since there wasn’t a specific concept for the location, we presented several suitable options by giving them access to our extensive online database. Eventually, the absolutely unique and futuristic, art deco style control room of Kelenföld Power Plant was chosen.

Progressive’s location database brought attention to the Art Deco Keleföld Power Plant as a perfect place to shoot

As this is an out-of-order station, which hasn’t been renovated for a long-long time, so it had some quite dangerous areas which made the preproduction a real challenge. We even rented a huge machine to hoist the tons of equipment upstairs since there was only a very narrow staircase leading up to the room.

Besides the unique location, the anamorphic Hawk lenses that we rented from Germany also gave a sense of peculiarity and mystery to the atmosphere of the video.

Anamorphic Hawk lenses were rented from Germany to create the right atmosphere for the promo

But in the end, this project was very much about the great selection of Budapest’s locations that made it possible to take this shoot out of the studio and have this amazing and exciting video as a result.