Notlith · Reading
Video production company in Reading for weather, climate and data science
Reading is home to the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and to a university with a long record in meteorology, and around them work consultancies, analytics teams and start-ups that sell what weather and climate data can do. Notlith is a remote video production company. We turn your charts, maps, interfaces and photographs into finished films, with creative direction, AI-assisted imagery, editing, colour, music and sound.
Remote production · From your photos
Who buys a forecast
The audience for these films is rarely the general public. It is an energy trader weighing a week of wind, a farm business planning a harvest, a local authority preparing for flooding, an underwriter pricing a portfolio. Each needs to see what the service tells them and which decision it changes. We start by naming that decision, because it settles which output appears on screen first.
A film for a sales conversation might follow one decision from question to outcome, using your real outputs at every step. A film for a funder or a public audience needs more context and fewer acronyms. We keep the two apart rather than making one film that half serves both, and we write the narration with your scientists, not around them.
Animating charts without bending the data
Motion makes a map or an ensemble plot readable, but it can also distort it. We animate from your exported figures and data layers, keeping axes, scales, colour bars and units as your team produced them. Smoothing, interpolation between frames or a sweeping camera move over a heat map are discussed first, because each can suggest a precision the data does not have.
AI-assisted imagery has a role around the data, not inside it: an establishing image of a coastline, a field or a wind farm built from photographs you supply. Those shots are labelled as illustrative wherever they could be read as a record of a real event. No generated storm, flood or satellite image appears as though it were an observation.
Showing uncertainty honestly
Forecasting businesses sell probability, and films tend to flatten it into certainty. A line saying a model predicts a storm is not the same as one saying it gives the storm a probability. We keep that distinction in the script and the picture, showing ranges, spreads or several possible tracks where your product works that way, and your scientists check every sentence about skill or accuracy.
Tone matters too. Weather can be frightening, and footage of real disasters belongs to the people who lived through them. We do not borrow news images of floods or fires for drama, and we do not imply that your service foresaw a specific past event unless you can document it. Calm, precise imagery suits viewers who handle risk as part of their job.
Research projects, funders and plain English
University groups and their partners often need a film at the end of a funded project: a summary for the funder, a version for policymakers, a short clip for the public. Funders usually set acknowledgement wording and logo rules, and each partner institution may want its own approval. We collect those rules at the start and give every partner a clear point in the review for sign-off.
Plain-English narration, captions and audio description where required make the films usable beyond specialists. We also deliver the animated figures as separate files, so they can return in lectures and reports. Ownership, music licences and any third-party data shown on screen are set out in the quote, including datasets whose licence restricts use in video.
Catalog demonstration
See the production approach
English, adaptable to your language
Plan the details
Can you work directly from our data files?
Yes, from exported figures, map layers or rendered frames your team prepares. We do not alter values, and any visual change to scales or colours is agreed with your scientists first.
Do you generate weather imagery?
Only illustrative images around the data, built from your photographs and labelled where they could be mistaken for a real event. Observations and forecasts always come from your outputs.
Do you have an office in Reading?
No. We are a remote studio without a Thames Valley office. Reviews happen through shared links and video calls at times that suit your team.
Can one project produce a funder film and a sales film?
Yes, if both are scoped from the start. They can share animated figures while keeping separate scripts, lengths and audiences.
Start with your images
Send us the figures or interface you want explained, the decision your audience makes with them and any funder rules, and we will propose a script outline.