One Million Views: Filming the V&A’s Antimony Cup
One of the quietest films I have ever made has just passed 1.1 million views.
The piece is simple on paper. Angus Patterson, Senior Metalwork Curator at the V&A, opens a small box in his office and takes out an antimony cup, a historical medical object made from a toxic metal once used to induce vomiting and purge the body. People in the past would drink from it when they felt ill, letting the metal leach into the liquid and trigger a violent reaction. It is strange, uncomfortable, and oddly fascinating. And for whatever reason, people have not been able to stop watching it.
We shot the film in Angus’s tiny office inside the V&A. There was barely room for him, let alone two cameras and lights. I had to shift furniture, push shelves back, and carve out just enough space to make it work. I spent most of the shoot kneeling on the floor, operating a camera on sticks with a loose head so I could quietly follow the cup as Angus handled it. The entire piece was filmed in half a day, start to finish, the kind of efficient, slightly scrappy setup museum shoots often demand.
The coverage was deliberately simple. Two Canon C70s. One locked off wide on Angus as he spoke, and the other used to gently track the object in real time. Once the piece to camera was done, I moved in for close-ups and select pickup shots to give the edit texture and breathing room.
When it went live in January 2024, it immediately found an audience. Views climbed quickly, then settled, hovering around half a million for months. I assumed that was that. But over time it kept resurfacing, being shared, recommended, and rediscovered. Nearly a year later it has crossed 1.1 million views, making it the sixth most watched video on the entire V&A channel, which still feels slightly surreal for a film about a vomiting cup.
I think part of its appeal is the tension between the calmness of Angus and the horror of the object. There is something quietly compelling about watching someone knowledgeable and measured explain a piece of history that is, frankly, quite grotesque. It is not played for shock, but it cannot avoid it either.
It is a good reminder that scale does not always come from spectacle. Sometimes it comes from a small room, a strange object, a steady voice, and the space to let curiosity do the rest.
If you are developing content for a museum, archive, or cultural collection and need a filmmaker who understands how to let objects speak for themselves, you can get in touch via my contact page.
