Pizza Co: Cinema and Social Ads

Client: The Pizza Company on behalf of Fearless Advertising

Project: Love it. Share it

Location: Greater Manchester

Deliverables:

1 x 40s Cinema commercial
1 x 30s digital ad
Social cuts in 1:1, 9:16 and 4:5 formats
20+ 5K screengrabs

Dead Pixel did:

Location scouting
Casting
Treatment & producing
Filming
Directing
Editing & grade
5.1 surround sound mix

Quote of the Shoot:

DOP: “We’re on the streets working with this famous guy”
Jack Fincham: “Who’s that then?"

Brief

After delivering a very successful social content and photography shoot for The Pizza Company, on behalf of Fearless Advertising, we had the opportunity to pitch for their first cinema commercial. We received the concept which highlighted some of the things that “as a nation, we just love!” (said in our best Essex accent!).

It was a no-brainer that this needed a fun, fast-paced execution that would be driven by the dialogue to resonate with those Friday night takeaway lovers who know the score. So, we put our thoughts together on how we could do the script justice by using our team’s expertise and skills to deliver a multi-location shoot across the tight deadline of one day (we may have mentioned our love for pizza more than once).

Pre-Production

After winning the project, we built on the storyboards and began creating a director’s treatment that included some subtle nods to the brand and clever in-camera whip transitions to move between scenes in a dynamic way. Once the storyboards were signed off, it was onto casting, location scouting, shot listing and planning the logistics of the shoot.

Casting the lead character was the biggest hurdle. We whittled down over 100 headshots and 25 self-tapes of varying skill levels and charisma. Eventually, the brand settled on ITV’s Love Island winner, Jack Fincham, as they felt his character and audience were more in line with their potential customer base. Plus, agreeing a deal to market the content to his 1.7m Instagram followers would become and added bonus.

Due to some of the locations being on the street, we liaised with the local council to acquire filming permissions and mapped out each scene in detail including extras, props and wardrobe. We even worked with an SFX team to build a custom game show buzzer to trigger our pyrotechnics. Based on actor availability this all had to be accomplished in one day which meant we had to develop a strict schedule.

Production

Like most TV productions we started bright and early with an 8am call time. The 15 crew arrived at base camp and began rigging the lighting, camera, props, special fx and wardrobe. We shot the advert on our Red Gemini 5K kit rigged to a DJI Ronin 2 to offer smooth tracking shots that moved with our lead character as he travelled from scene to scene. We had over 10 extras that came at select times throughout the day to help fill the frame and make the scenes busier.

After capturing the opening sequence on the local high street, we then moved onto our ‘talent show winner’ shot that involved confetti cannons and pyro to give it that wow factor. We had 3 chances to get it right but with plenty of blocking and rehearsals we nailed it in one take and shot another for luck.

Our production team paid special attention to the props and details across each scene to bring out brand colours and aid brand recognition.

After lunch, the team de-rigged and moved onto our interior house location. The scene had a dimly-lit Friday night take away vibe so we had to black out multiple sky lights and large windows to control the spill of light. We had our food stylist on hand to bring in fresh pizza and sides between takes and ensure the food looked as good as possible.

Post-Production

Our in-house team took care of the post-production including an offline and online edit. We conducted a full grade and 5.1 surround sound mix to comply with Dolby requirements for the cinema playouts.

Once the 40s edit was completed we began crafting the 9x16 and 1x1 versions to be used across a variety of digital outputs.