Lucinda River
Phillip Wood
My bones couldn’t stand the chill and in a bid to overcome my miserable cold-water swimming ability started going to Brockwell Lido to strengthen my resolve.
Inspired both by the swimmers I saw there, braving all conditions for their daily swim, and Madeleine Waller’s book on London Field’s morning swimmers, I began researching Brockwell’s sunrise clientele for a film project. The drive and thoughts of these swimmers had always intrigued me, a lazy runner who could always find an excuse not to run. Coming straight out of Derek Zoolander’s school for people Who Can’t Swim Good and Want to Do Swim Related Stuff Good Too, I admired and perhaps even envied them.
After spending some time researching the idea, I came across an obscure lido forum which spoke about a bunch of crazy folk. Every second Saturday of the month, they would run all the way from Hampstead Heath and would take in every pool they could on the way! I’d finally found what I was looking for.
At 6.30am, on a cold December morning, I managed to pull in some favours and amassed a crew together to film the event. We sat at Hampstead Heath’s Starbucks and watched the slow stream of swimmers scoffing their muffins and mixing in with the newbies. There was clearly a lot of friendliness and camaraderie within the group, and I immediately knew I had made the right decision.
I’d heard a lot about the shiny bottomed Parliament Hill lido. The first shoot we did there, I jumped in to get some underwater shots of the famous metallic shimmer. Even in my faux-pas wetsuit, I simply couldn’t handle the 2 degree cold. According to the timer on my GoPro, I lasted less than three minutes in there!
However, the main challenge we had to overcome with the film was the timing. Driving, parking, setting up and getting to the next scene is always a challenge in a city beset by a remarkable consistency in traffic like London. And as we wanted to capture the transforming landscape that the swimmer takes in as the route dictates, from the plush village feel of Hampstead, the high end fashion of Sloane Street to the industrial warehouses of Battersea, we knew it’d take two bites of the cherry. Unluckily for us, the two coldest months possible: December and January.
With the help of Jonathan, we mapped out the entire route then did a couple of test runs to see what locations would work and how long it took to run between the locations. We had roughly five-seven minutes between each location to set up and pack down and make a move for the next spot. We split up into two small crews in order to do this, one to capture the parks and one to capture the lidos, then split up the street locations with a 15 minutes distance of each other, enabling us to constantly move to the next location whilst the other crew shot and then jump ahead of us.
It was the toughest shoot I’d ever done, but your energy and enthusiasm for the event was infectious. The whole experience thoroughly rewarding - despite south London traffic doing it’s best to ruin our Clapham shoot!
The pleasure of filming the swimmer in the open pools and parks was my personal highlight, but my favourite shots come from Knightsbridge, I loved the juxtaposition of you running through one of the world’s most famous fashion districts without a care in the world.
Inspired both by the swimmers I saw there, braving all conditions for their daily swim, and Madeleine Waller’s book on London Field’s morning swimmers, I began researching Brockwell’s sunrise clientele for a film project. The drive and thoughts of these swimmers had always intrigued me, a lazy runner who could always find an excuse not to run. Coming straight out of Derek Zoolander’s school for people Who Can’t Swim Good and Want to Do Swim Related Stuff Good Too, I admired and perhaps even envied them.
After spending some time researching the idea, I came across an obscure lido forum which spoke about a bunch of crazy folk. Every second Saturday of the month, they would run all the way from Hampstead Heath and would take in every pool they could on the way! I’d finally found what I was looking for.
At 6.30am, on a cold December morning, I managed to pull in some favours and amassed a crew together to film the event. We sat at Hampstead Heath’s Starbucks and watched the slow stream of swimmers scoffing their muffins and mixing in with the newbies. There was clearly a lot of friendliness and camaraderie within the group, and I immediately knew I had made the right decision.
I’d heard a lot about the shiny bottomed Parliament Hill lido. The first shoot we did there, I jumped in to get some underwater shots of the famous metallic shimmer. Even in my faux-pas wetsuit, I simply couldn’t handle the 2 degree cold. According to the timer on my GoPro, I lasted less than three minutes in there!
However, the main challenge we had to overcome with the film was the timing. Driving, parking, setting up and getting to the next scene is always a challenge in a city beset by a remarkable consistency in traffic like London. And as we wanted to capture the transforming landscape that the swimmer takes in as the route dictates, from the plush village feel of Hampstead, the high end fashion of Sloane Street to the industrial warehouses of Battersea, we knew it’d take two bites of the cherry. Unluckily for us, the two coldest months possible: December and January.
With the help of Jonathan, we mapped out the entire route then did a couple of test runs to see what locations would work and how long it took to run between the locations. We had roughly five-seven minutes between each location to set up and pack down and make a move for the next spot. We split up into two small crews in order to do this, one to capture the parks and one to capture the lidos, then split up the street locations with a 15 minutes distance of each other, enabling us to constantly move to the next location whilst the other crew shot and then jump ahead of us.
It was the toughest shoot I’d ever done, but your energy and enthusiasm for the event was infectious. The whole experience thoroughly rewarding - despite south London traffic doing it’s best to ruin our Clapham shoot!
The pleasure of filming the swimmer in the open pools and parks was my personal highlight, but my favourite shots come from Knightsbridge, I loved the juxtaposition of you running through one of the world’s most famous fashion districts without a care in the world.
