Skating a museum after hours

Once in a lifetime

London’s Natural History Museum: grade 1 listed, considered one of Britain’s finest Victorian buildings.

Only Red Bull could think of turning this majestic building into a skatepark.

That was the opportunity facing us—how to bring out skateboarding’s unique style and culture in the most juxtaposing spaces for this one-time-only project.

Time for priceless history to meet some of the world’s best skaters.

The challenge

Turn London's Natural History Museum into a once-in-a-lifetime skatepark for the world’s best skaters, featuring top Red Bull athletes Margie Didal, Lore Bruggeman, Aldana Bertran, and 6x X Games Champion Leticia Bufoni.

Lore Bruggeman, Aldana Bertran, Margie Lyndidal, and 6x X Games Champion Leticia Bufoni.

Museum to skatepark
(and back again)

Transforming a historic building into a skatepark doesn’t happen overnight, but in our case, it did—four times.

With the museum still open throughout the day, we could only get in once the doors closed. Then, we could unleash our huge crew to set up, shoot, and dismantle the entire set before the next day’s visitors set foot inside.

And they’d have no idea what had taken place overnight.

Collaborating closely with the NHM team, Red Bull UK, builders and athletes, we identified what could or couldn’t be skated and what we’d need to build to make the magic happen.

After all, in a building full of priceless artefacts, prehistoric skeletons, and 9k-carat gems—not to mention the precious cabinets and listed flooring—none of us wanted any damage. Pre-production planning was crucial.

60-camera array

This might be the only time we get to shoot a skate film in the Natural History Museum, so capturing an iconic shot was vital.

When developing the project, we were inspired by iconic skateboard photography, which perfectly captures complex tricks that can happen in the blink of an eye in one frame.

However, we needed more than one frame, so the camera array concept was born. A rig built of 60 individual cameras all lined up, synced and timed for us to freeze moments in time, capturing each athlete and board in perfect sync, all set to a backdrop like no other.

The results of our visual ambition and athlete collaboration are spectacular. Matrix, eat your heart out.

The skate audience

All that was left was to make sure we hit the right mark with how we shot and cut the project to make it work best for skate’s core audience. Think raw session vibes, high energy and plenty of fish eye shots.

Bringing in this distinctive style gave our film the style needed to live on Red Bull Skateboarding’s YouTube channel. But we weren’t done there.

It’s not every day you film in a location like the Natural History Museum, so having the campaign to match mattered.

Taking a heavy UGC focus to the shoot along with the stand-out array moment meant that vertical content was always in mind, attracting Red Bull’s diverse sports audience.