ABOUT

M&C had completed a stills campaign and wanted to include moving image content. The brief was very simple. There was already a template. So it was essentially a question of how best to create it in the moving image. Given the event time, (chucking a glass of champagne that was not Krug away, took a mere 1/4sec, yet the film had to run for at least 30sec, preferably 40-60sec, it was really a question of doing the maths - calculating the factor by which we had to slow down the event time, And then working out the cinematography requirements to capture the event at 1500 frames per second. That was fairly straight forward. What was far more difficult was how to wrangle the liquid so that it looked dramatic and beautiful. I dug into the old school film techniques, the in-camera effects. We hit the area within frame with a substantial amount of light. Then we placed industrial fans, underneath the area where the liquid would be thrown and also directly in the path of the liquid. I was working on the assumption that as the liquid atomised, it would get lighter and thinner and so the fans would amplify the atomising process further. It worked pretty effectively.

As producer, I obviously had to cost this up. Really the hardest issue was trying to make the necessary contingencies with regard to the liquid. The set up itself was fairly straight forward. A small crew with a lot of light was all that was required. As Director, it was really more technical execution, making sure we had put in place everything we believed necessary to try and ensure we got the liquid to do as we wished. Much of the technical issues were in regard to the cinematography issues, and as I was photographing this project, it all came under the same banner.

The agency came along for the first few takes. The first take was almost perfect, so they were happy and then left us to get on with it, assured that all was safely taken care of.

The film is obviously a one shot. We shot about 30 takes in total, safe in the knowledge that our first take, looked pretty special. It was the one we in fact used for the final film.

Post production was very simple. It involved simply a grade and then applying the titles and laying the music back.