Hunter's Yard (2025)
Client:
Year:
Sector:
Type:
Budget:
Hunter’s Yard / The Norfolk Heritage Fleet Trust
2025
Heritage & Charity
Documentary Series, Social Campaign
£10k-£20k
Scroll down to see another film from the series.
Overview
"Most people, once they’re on that boat, they’ll all tell you it changed their life a little bit because they’ve done something so different."
Eye Film partnered with the Norfolk Heritage Fleet Trust to create a documentary-led content campaign exploring endangered heritage crafts, youth sailing initiatives, and the cultural significance of Hunter’s Yard on the Norfolk Broads.
The project centred around a series of short documentary films designed to support fundraising, outreach, education, and digital engagement. Rather than creating a single promotional video, the campaign was structured as a flexible library of documentary content that could help the Trust communicate its impact across multiple audiences.
At the heart of the project was a simple challenge: how do you communicate the value of experiences that are difficult to quantify? The confidence gained from steering a boat for the first time; the calm that comes from being away from screens and noise; the quiet satisfaction of preserving a traditional craft with your hands; the feeling of stepping into a slower and more deliberate way of living. Those ideas are difficult to explain through brochures or fundraising copy alone – they needed to be experienced.
The Challenge
Operating from its original base with its original fleet, Hunter’s Yard is one of the last remaining traditional hire yard of its kind in the country. The Norfolk Heritage Fleet Trust preserves and maintains a collection of 1930s wooden Broads yachts while also delivering educational sailing experiences for young people across Norfolk and beyond.
Over the last three years, the Trust has taken more than 1,000 young people out sailing, many from marginalised communities and backgrounds. At the same time, the organisation continues to preserve heritage boatbuilding skills that are now officially listed as endangered crafts. The work itself was already meaningful. The challenge was communicating it.
The Trust needed films capable of doing several jobs simultaneously:
- Demonstrating the impact of sailing on young people
- Showcasing endangered heritage skills
- Supporting conversations with funders and partners
- Encouraging schools and youth groups to get involved
- Celebrating the wider heritage and environment of the Norfolk Broads
Most importantly, the films needed to feel genuine. From the very first conversations with Hunter’s Yard manager Martin Whitaker, it was clear this was not a project that could rely on polished marketing language or heavily scripted messaging. The strength of the story was already there in the people, the place, and the experience itself.
A Documentary Approach
From the outset, Eye Film approached the project as a documentary series rather than a traditional promotional campaign.
Instead of fast-paced edits and heavily produced interviews, the team focused on observation, atmosphere, and authenticity. Interviews were filmed in real working environments, including boatsheds, workshops, and by the water, allowing contributors to speak naturally within spaces that genuinely mattered to them.
The pacing of the films became one of the defining creative decisions. “As filmmakers, we felt the project needed room to breathe,” explained creative lead Tom Stanners. “Hunter’s Yard represents a very different rhythm of life to the world most people experience day to day and we wanted the films to reflect that.”
That slower pace mirrored many of the ideas repeatedly expressed by contributors throughout filming.
“You see this sort of different way of being… opposed to the world that we live in, very busy and screen focused. It just takes you away from all of that background noise.”
Natural sound played a significant role throughout the series: water against timber, ropes tightening in the wind, tools working against wood, distant birds across the Broads. Music was used sparingly, allowing the environment itself to carry much of the emotional weight.
The final campaign included:
- Five short documentary films (3–6 minutes each)
- One longer compilation film for funders and stakeholders
- Ten portrait-format social reels for digital outreach
- Versions with and without subtitles
- Animated archival materials and branded end slates
Rather than functioning as standalone promotional assets, the films were designed as a connected documentary campaign, giving the Trust a long-term library of content for fundraising, education, outreach, and social media.
Preserving Endangered Skills
One of the strongest threads running through the series was the preservation of traditional craftsmanship. Hunter’s Yard maintains a fleet of wooden sailing boats originally built for the Norfolk Broads during the 1930s. Preserving those vessels requires specialist knowledge and practical skills that are becoming increasingly rare.
Throughout filming, contributors spoke openly about the reality facing traditional boatbuilding. Maintaining the fleet is not simply about preserving old boats for nostalgia’s sake. It is about protecting a disappearing set of practical skills, regional knowledge, and ways of working that are becoming harder to sustain with every passing generation.
Boatbuilder and sailing instructor Ezra Bailey described the trade bluntly: “It’s a dying trade, so we need younger people in it.”
The films focused not only on the technical process of restoration, but on the people who continue to dedicate their lives to it. Close observational cinematography captured the physicality of the work: shaping timber by hand, restoring curved hulls, repairing ageing materials, and maintaining boats that simply do not exist anywhere else. For many of the contributors, the appeal of traditional craftsmanship extended beyond heritage alone. There was a recurring sense throughout filming that boatbuilding offered something increasingly rare in modern working life: patience, tactility, and visible progress.
As Ezra explained, “You can look at a chunk of wood and say, right, I’m going to make that out of that piece.” He also spoke about the accessibility of practical craftsmanship and the importance of preserving alternative pathways into work and creativity, particularly for people who may struggle within more traditional academic environments.
Former helicopter pilot Andrew Tween reflected on what drew him towards the slower and more hands-on nature of boatbuilding after years spent in high-pressure environments. “I spent most of my working career running around with my hair on fire,” he said. “So it was quite nice to do something completely different.”
Young People, Confidence & Responsibility
While the heritage side of the project provided historical and cultural context, the emotional centre of the campaign focused on the young people experiencing Hunter’s Yard for the first time (the video can be seen at the top of this page).
Many of the participants arriving at the Broads had never sailed before. Some were dealing with anxiety, low confidence, neurodiversity, or difficult personal circumstances. Rather than relying on scripted testimony or heavily directed interviews, the film centred around the experiences of student and sailor Ash Darwent alongside reflections from sailing instructor Leonie Hughes, allowing both contributors to speak openly and naturally about the impact sailing can have on young people.
]As Ash explained in the film: “I was a very shy, anxious person and now, like I’m in university, I wouldn’t be doing that if I hadn’t been taught confidence through sailing.”
Throughout filming, recurring themes emerged around responsibility, presence, and self-belief, with both Ash and Leonie repeatedly describing sailing as an experience that demanded complete concentration, forcing people to disconnect from everyday distractions and become fully immersed in the physical environment around them.
As sailing instructor Leonie reflected, Hunter’s Yard offers “a different way of being” from the busy and screen-focused world many young people are used to. Ash described that same feeling in more personal terms: “You’re away from your phone for a little bit. You’re in nature… you cannot be thinking about all that baggage in your head. You have to be in the now.”
The films also explored how practical, hands-on learning environments can create opportunities for young people who may struggle within more traditional educational structures. Ash spoke candidly about the importance of adapting teaching approaches for people with neurodiversity, explaining that more abstract classroom-based learning can sometimes feel disconnected from real understanding.
One of the most memorable stories captured during filming involved Ash being trusted to skipper a boat independently for the first time. Reflecting on being trusted to skipper a boat independently for the first time, she said: “That was terrifying at first. But when I did it, it really built my confidence and showed me, actually, you can do this.”
What emerged throughout the series was a consistent sense that the project was about far more than sailing alone. It was about giving young people responsibility. It was about confidence built through experience rather than instruction. And it was about reconnecting people with physical environments, practical skills, and shared experiences that increasingly feel absent from everyday life. That emotional authenticity became one of the defining strengths of the final films.
Filming on The Broads
Production took place across multiple periods throughout 2025, structured around the natural rhythm of the Yard’s calendar. School sailing sessions were filmed throughout the summer months, while restoration and maintenance work continued through autumn and winter.
A significant proportion of filming took place directly on the water, requiring careful planning and close collaboration with the Trust’s qualified skippers.
The production used a dedicated camera boat to capture dynamic sailing sequences across the Broads, alongside handheld and gimbal-stabilised cinematography, drone aerials, and two-camera interview setups.
Filming conditions were often unpredictable, particularly when working around changing weather and busy waterways, but the team deliberately embraced the natural atmosphere of the environment rather than attempting to overly stylise it. Archive photography and historical materials were also incorporated throughout the series, adding historical context while maintaining the grounded documentary tone of the project.
The Outcome
The completed films are now being used across the Trust’s website, social channels, outreach activity, and conversations with funders and partners. For Martin Whitaker, the emotional response to the final series came as a surprise.
“I felt quite emotional – exactly the response we wanted to generate in the audience. They had caught the commitment of our team and young people and made me feel really proud of them, and of what we are doing.”
For Eye Film, this project represented the kind of documentary-led storytelling increasingly central to the company’s creative direction. Rather than treating documentary techniques as purely aesthetic choices, the project demonstrated how observational filmmaking can help organisations communicate emotional and cultural value in ways that more traditional promotional content often cannot.
At its core, this film series is about preservation in its broadest sense: preserving endangered skills, preserving confidence in young people, preserving regional heritage, and preserving ways of living that might otherwise disappear quietly over time.
Credits
Creative Lead / Director / Editor:
Seconds Camera / Graphics:
Production Co-ordinators:
Tom Stanners
Jack Bernardin
Chloé MacKay & Eve Hill
Gallery
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