13 adverts, 36 million views : Here's how we did it
We were recently commissioned by Premier Foods PLC to script, produce, shoot and edit 13 Youtube pre-roll ads for 5 of their biggest brands.
The creative campaign “No Reservation Needed'“ was briefed to us in February 2021 with the intention to deliver a collection of 20s mouth-watering, food porn adverts for Oxo, Sharwood’s, Ambrosia, Batchelors and Bisto.
There’s a hell of lot that goes into these types of productions, and we love sharing the journey, so we thought we’d document the process of how we made it happen.
Pre-Production
Once we had the recipes from the brand’s NPD team, we pulled various references and ideas together into a mood board document that clearly showed the suggested shots, the narrative of the edits and the voiceover script that we intended to use.
Drawing on the data from a previous campaign, we knew we needed 1-2 impactful shots to open the adverts and steer people away from that dreaded ‘SKIP’ button. So we crafted an opening sequence that utilised unique perspectives and super slow motion to grab and maintain attention.
Once the mood boards were all signed off by the Marketing Director, it was onto location scouting, booking crew, sourcing props and buying ingredients.
We own a lot of cameras, lighting and kit in house which means we can be reactive to almost any video request but it also means we can keep costs reasonable without incurring additional hires.
That said, there are special occasions when we need to bring in super high-end equipment to really push the content to its limits. Enter the Phantom VEO 4K 1000 fps camera as supplied by Promotion Hire. This specialist piece of equipment, with the right lighting and styling, gives an immersive perspective that the human eye and brain doesn’t usually capture (as you’re playing back moments 40x slower than real life).
Production
Time for the big shoot. We shot these 13 ads across 7 independent days throughout Spring 2021. We used premium Cheshire homes for the locations and utilised the services of UK Locations and Lifestyle Locations to help research and book the perfect spaces. We specifically chose to shoot on location rather than in a studio in order to have real depth and texture to each shot wherever we pointed the camera without limitations. It also reduces the need for a set build, prop styling, studio rental and additional prep time to make it look ‘real’.
Shooting on the RED Gemini 5K for Ambrosia
Our production teams tend to be fairly small and nimble consisting of a Director/Producer, Director Of Photography, Camera Assistant, Food Stylist and Runner. We like to think of ourselves as a specialist team working collaboratively where all ideas are welcome. We find the cross over leads to bigger and better content and a more enjoyable experience for everyone involved.
We shot these ads on our RED Gemini 5K cinema camera in 100fps mixing in the super slow motion Phantom footage where necessary. Each recipe required a slightly different lighting setup, so we’d often spend the morning shooting all hero shots and statics on the RED, then jumping onto the Phantom in the afternoon.
We paid particular attention to the background and food styling to make the ads look as slick as possible and bring lifestyle elements that are synonymous with these household brands.
Post Production
We pieced together these edits at our base in The Sharp Project, Manchester, using Adobe Premiere Pro CC. All voiceovers were directed and recorded remotely and then placed into the timeline. The editing process was fairly simple as we’re following the pre-approved storyboards and a 20 second edit was pulled together in no time.
This freed up some time to focus on sound design and graphics to make the ads really stand out. Once the edits were approved we then handed them over to global media and marketing company, Carat, to fulfil the online media activity. As of July 2021, the ads had amassed over 36.4million views and counting.
“Dead Pixel work in a unique and creative way; their knowledge, process and enthusiasm made it a very smooth project. They were able to easily interpret our briefs and NPD recommendations to turn them into creative and impactful edits that have performed well for us with strong view-through rates”
Watch the full behind-the -scenes case study here:
Behind-the-scenes gallery:
