The idea was born in the summer 2022, we awarded production at Thankgivings, and we shot just after New Years Day, and then, approximately 200 days later, we have posted and are posting final cuts April 2023.
We evaluated at over 60 directors’ reels, had hundreds of meetings, calls, and sidebars to get our favorite creative treatment/techincal approach awarded.
Often in a celebrity campaign, it’s a massive team effort to align on the creative, production approach, financials, location and the others thousands of moving parts.
And we did it, and we did it well!
Ultimately, we were able to take the production to England where we got the maximium value for our investment: more set design, more days shooting on stage, and a custom, remote controlled camera rig in the ceiling which directly translates to more impact on the screen.
We were able to spend a full week prepping, rehersing, and shooting with our star, Bai, the incredibly talented WonderWater, and Sydney Sweeney too!
With great efficiency we were able to walk away with 6 unique hero films: a :30, 2 :15s, and 3 :06s which has been cut up into 72 different video assets.
Also, as we did with Hailee Steinfeld, in 2022 for CORE, we planned a number of different social video ideas to work with Sydney between setups and after wardrobe changes, which gives us more opportunity to expand the creative connection with our audience and of course, ultimately leads to more deliverables.
Tim Brown of 1st Ave Machine, was our director and he and our team put together a beautiful vision of what these films could become.
We built:
Completely bespoke 360 rig
50ft 360 blue screen
30ft diameter for the 360 camera
154ft radius from camera to Sydney
Fixed platform
Fully motorised
7 Electricians to rig the lighting
6 riggers and 4 grips to build rig plus 2 x VFX crew members
From the very beginning, Yo Umeda, our Executive Creative Director, was clear that this campaign needed a deft precision with the whirling camera movement and the post production on the wonderous worlds needed to executed at the highest level: From our editor in Argentina to our VFX team in Prague, 14 hour days, 1am PST team meetings, and long days in the coloring and sound design studios became common place.
One of the most important elements was the use of AI UNREAL ENGINE
Creating unique environments.background options quickly before ultimately zeroing in and refining for each scene, rather than spending weeks and a ton of resources to build them out with all the details.
Roto scoping Sydney out of the stage world and seamlessly placing her in the different wonderous worlds is a process that requires weeks of work meticious work and creative execellence
Additionally, we were able to use our different shoot assets to create 15 unique animated banners.
We also added a blooper reel which Sydney posted on Febrauary 7th that has become her highest performing reel at 13 million views+.
You can see two for TikTok: a great example of being efficient with production days - shooting BTS footage and being creative with how we can use that alone or blend it with the hero films, creating more and more entertaining ways to engage our audience.
