Making Diamonds
Having the time to consider every decision, every angle and shot, every reaction caught on camera, will always deliver a better result. But these days time is often a luxury nobody can afford.
How pressure can create effective advertising
The pressure of a fast turnaround can bring out your best. During a short period of high-intensity focus you can feel unstoppable.
The brief.
Our recent shoot for Viva Energy’s Shell V-Power is a great example of what can be achieved in a short space of time. With media booked during the Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix we were under pressure to deliver a finished TVC.
This wasn’t creating an ad from scratch. We were creating a doppelganger: an ad almost identical to an existing ad, apart from a few minor details.
The original Shell V-Power ad showed a red car escaping the clutches of a monster (made of engine gunk) by driving to a Shell service station where it was protected by a shield of Shell V-Power.
The new ad was kind of the same. But, to highlight Shell V-Power’s association with Supercar racing, the car was to be the Shell V-Power Racing Team Supercar and we were to feature the two drivers, Fabian Coulthard and Scott McLaughlin.
This would require us taking what we could from the existing ad (backgrounds, monster, petrol station) and blending it seamlessly with new images we were to shoot (racing car, drivers, roads).
Gulp!
The complexities are daunting. Matching camera angles is a nightmare; matching colour is always tough; matching light intensity and direction is even harder; and very few professional sportsmen have ever enjoyed the benefits of acting lessons.
Fortunately in this brilliant creative industry there is always someone who can help. We have worked with SO Productions before and knew they had the know-how and ingenuity to pull it off.
The whirlwind.
Tropical cyclone Debbie recently hit Queensland with devastating force. A couple of weeks earlier we hit with just as much gusto.
The location was a motor racing track in the Queensland cane fields, chosen because the light would be predictable and the bends matched those of the original ad.
Then we got going.
We flew the crew of 40 people and their equipment to the remote location to meet the Shell V-Power Racing Team and film birds-eye shots of the car with drones and green screen shots of the drivers while pushing them for their best possible performance (they were great – used to cameras I guess), then flew back to Melbourne where we began post-production work selecting takes and stripping together the new film with the old and watching in relieved amazement as the whole thing seemed to come together seamlessly.
Exhale.
From start to finish the production was handled with military precision. It had to be. And the result? See for yourself.
See? Seamless. And so, with a fair degree of pride and satisfaction in a challenge well met, we move on to the next diamond.
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