Solas Neon

We were invited to work with the Solas Neon team to create a short film that would tell their story and showcase their skills to the world. The work is extremely compelling from a visual perspective, so we wanted to produce a piece that captured the beauty. The video would be used for their social media channels and website.

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Solas Neon is Scotland’s only dedicated neon sign workshop, creating bespoke, real-glass neon signs. With years of collective experience, they are one of the UK’s only remaining workshops that designs, manufactures and fabricates all of their signs in-house. Working with clients across the country, they push creative boundaries to create custom neon signs that pack a punch.

When we arrived at the address of the workshop, we were bemused to find ourselves outside an apparently disused railway building off Slateford Road in Edinburgh. Once inside the building, however, we were welcomed by the warm glow and buzzing sound from the various coloured illuminated neons. It was a surprising but striking contrast to the exterior of the workshop.

We shot footage in the workshop and interviewed Emery and Sandy, who founded the company, to gain an insight into why they started the business, how they came to learn these skills, and to discover the process of making a neon sign. Emery is newer to the game, but has a real flair for innovation and design, while Sandy is an experienced mentor, and keen to pass his skills onto the next generation. Together they make an ideal team and are reigniting what was a dying art.

It is rare to find products that are handmade in the UK from start to finish these days, and working with real passion, the guys are driven by a slightly mad enthusiasm for what they do. We wanted to reflect this by creating a high-end piece of video that would not only showcase their talent and products, but also give some sense of the story that supports each piece.

Neons certainly aren’t an easy thing to make, but there is something genuinely magical when they are finally switched on. Documenting this complete process made it easy to appreciate why the members of the Solas team are so passionate about what they do.