Guinness – St Patrick’s Day shoot

March 14, 2013June 11, 2013 | Zapfly

On an icy cold Thursday and Friday in January, as the snow fell and the temperatures tumbled below zero, I was on the set of a Guinness shoot, to celebrate St Patrick’s Day this March 17th 2013.

The team was made up of our Guinness client, creatives from Saatchi, Michael Sugerman (Director) and Production team from Holster, my team from Tribal, a live action / post production team from Rushes, as well as the assembled cast and crew.

The complexity of the shoot was based on the fact that we were interjecting personalised elements into the experience and therefore had to carefully choreograph the key sequences that my post production team at Luma could then create assets from and pass them over to the render farm team at Crystal CG / Hoopers.

One point of interest was that the bar set we used was from the hit TV comedy ‘Only Fools and Horses’.

The final output is available on Facebook: http://bit.ly/GuinnessPaintYourTownBlack

Here are a few behind the scenes images I managed to grab whilst on the two day shoot.

Behind the scenes

Screen captures from the shoot

Here are some links about the film in the press:
Marketing: http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/news/1173008/Guinness-unveils-St-Patricks-Weekend-marketing-drive/
The Drum: http://www.thedrum.com/news/2013/02/26/guinness-invites-world-paint-town-black-st-patricks-day
IBB Online: http://lbbonline.com/news/guinness-paint-the-town-black/
More About Advertising: http://www.moreaboutadvertising.com/2013/03/saatchi-paints-the-town-black-for-guinness/

John Lewis – Fitness shoot

February 16, 2013June 11, 2013 | Zapfly

In January of this year (2013), I executive produced a short film for John Lewis about the ever pertinent New Year’s topic of fitness. With only a very limited time frame to pull together the shoot, we worked with a small unit at Mind’s Eye to create a humorous and delicately shot short to demonstrate how we all start the New Year with the best of intentions to loose the gut just acquired over the Christmas break. However, our protagonist is thwarted at every turn by the shoddy state of his sporting gear.

How long did it take you to recognise the soundtrack?

Here are a few images I managed to grab whilst on the one day shoot.

Still from the video shoot

Wide shot 1

Wide shot 2

Main protagonist shot 1

Main protagonist shot 2

End shot (reverse)

Crew shot 1

Crew shot 2

Crew shot 3

Crew shot 4

Crew shot 5

Here are a couple of links from the press:
Drum’s Ad of the Day (18th January 2013): http://www.thedrum.com/news/2013/01/18/ad-day-john-lewis-old-fitness-equipment

M&M Global: http://www.mandmglobal.com/news/22-01-13/john-lewis-launches-new-year-new-start-fitnes.aspx

Marmite Oxford Street interactive Christmas lights

December 21, 2012June 11, 2013 | Zapfly

Marmite sponsored the Oxford Street lights for Christmas 2012. Their active campaign at the time was based around the ‘you either love it or hate it’ concept.
My team had been challenged with coming up with an imaginative way to bring this concept to life socially, primarily based on Facebook. The conclusion was to invite consumers to take pictures, demonstrating their love or hate of Marmite, which was uploaded onto a digital interactive bus shelter on London’s Oxford Street, by Selfridges. This bus shelter, just below the interactive display, was fitted with a 55” interactive screen and camera that enabled visitors to have their photo taken.

The interactive Christmas Lights display was a first for Oxford Street.

Aside from public generated images, the giant digital display also featured a series of Christmas Characters including Father Christmas and his elves, revealing their passion, positive or negative, for Marmite.

After moderation of the face shots, we sent participants an email with a designated time for when their image will appear on the screen. For people who were unable to view their face on the Marmite banner in situ, we set up a Facebook CCTV feed and broadcast live footage to the Marmite FB channel as well as an online gallery.

In addition to Facebook design, build and installation, we also got involved in the physical installation, as the crews shut down sections of Oxford Street through the night and trucks moved in to hoist the displays into place. Based in a test booth on the rooftop of Selfridges, we uploaded images to the display below, hanging around 15m above the street.

With an anticipated 40 million visitors expected to shop at London’s Oxford Street during Christmas, the sign had a very significant audience.

The display won a Silver Creative Circle 2013 for Digital: Best use of DOOH.

Here are some images of the physical installation of the display.