Myvegan : Viva La Vegan
Deliverables:
1 x 30s hero advert
In English, Spanish and French
5 x 15s cutdowns in 4:5 and 9:16
Photography
270 stills
30 x 5K screengrabs
Dead Pixel did:
Directors Treatment & Shot list
Production & Rigging
Super Slow Motion Filming
Food styling
Directing
Editing & grade
Photography cull and compression
Quote of the Shoot:
“This is the 2nd time I’ve had to wear a bin bag on a shoot”
Brief
After working with Myprotein for a number of years, we were approached by their sister company, Myvegan, with a fun new foodie brief. They knew we were food and slow motion specialists and asked if we were up for the challenge of creating a new 30s hero campaign plus supporting photography for their National Vegan month campaign titled ‘Viva La Vegan’.
Of course we jumped at the chance to bring out our air compressors, fish tanks and syringes to create an explosive ‘food porn’ ad full of flavour and colour.
Pre-Production
After reviewing many high-end references from the likes of M&S, Tesco Food and Aldi we began working on our director’s treatment.
There wasn’t a particular product that the team wanted to focus on but the aim was to emphasise a feeling of colour, ingredients, flavour and of course all plant-based products. So we started planning a mix of super slow motion, stop motion and macro shots that, when stitched together, would do just that.
We set aside a couple of days of testing to maximise the effectiveness on the shoot. We needed to fully understand the capacity of our air compressor with vegan protein powder and ordered in a bunch of clamps, pipettes and syringes for the repeatable macro detail.
Once the shot list was agreed and signed off it was onto the exciting bit…making a mess!
Production
Production for this project took place over 2 days at a South Manchester studio involving two stations working in tandem. On one side of the studio we had our video team with a full lighting/ colourama setup and on the other was the photography team. We had one stylist for each station making the food look as good as it possibly could, as well as manipulating the performance of the food during splashes and explosions.
We had a tight schedule and a lot of shots to get through mixing between eye level, macro and overhead shots depending on the particular requirements.
It was key that we brought in as much motion as possible when choosing the actions (e.g. falling fruit) because shooting at 1,000 frames per second reveals details within food/drink that the human eye just can’t see (hence the drill bit inserted into the strawberry covered in water).
With mop, vacuum and a lot of blue roll on hand, we created a colourful mess in the studio for 16 hours whilst having an absolute blast at the same time.
The photography teamed worked hard getting through 6 different setups capturing over 270 usable shots - all with slight variations in colour and action. We backed up all the imagery and sent it over to the internal design team at THG to create their banner ads.
Post-Production
The 30 second assembly cut took place over 4 days after going through many terabytes of data. To streamline this post-production process we had the music agreed and signed off before we even got to filming. We did this by sourcing 5 great options and sharing those with the client. It was a fairly unanimous result with the chosen track really driving the energy and vibe of the advert.
Once the main pass was completed, it was onto sound design to add in those dynamic impact sounds which bring each moment to life, social cuts, and translations in both Spanish and French.
“Dead Pixel have been great to work with - creative, resourceful and making our vision become a reality. The team have gone above and beyond what was asked for. Would definitely recommend!”
Here’s what the two-day shoot looked like…
Behind the scenes with Dead Pixel and Myvegan
