Summary
A thirsty, theatrical race
Wieden + Kennedy, with help from the fantastic Bryan Buckley and
The Mill LA, demonstrate the great lengths one will go to for the
perfect bottle of Coca-Cola.
Four film genres wander lost and thirsty in the desert when they
stumble upon the ultimate salvation of their thirst - an ice cold
Coke. Is it a Mirage? A real bottle of delicious Coke? And who will
be the first to reach it?
It was a grueling shoot on two locations outside of Cape Town with
the desert being used for the wide vistas -"I was as dry as
Lawrence's flip flop!" exclaims Shoot Supervisor Phil Crowe - but
the crew quickly discovered that they were unable to drive their
vehicles over the dunes, forcing the team to set up at a second
location in a sand quarry. "The challenges became apparent as the
shoot progressed, aside from comps and split screens for timings of
the action, the biggest being how to make the quarry look like the
desert," explains Phil.
"I would say that trying to execute this spot was akin to building
a sandcastle too close to the water's edge," shares 2D Lead Artist
Tim Bird. "Many hours were spent developing a fantastic yet real
world in which the Coke Mirage bottle could live. The brief was to
make it Magic and Fantastic and Majestic, yet real enough that you
could reach out, grab it and drink it."
"Our difficulties were nailing down the concepts for the desert
and the sign," explains 3D Lead Artist David Hackett. "The desert
went through a few changes from soft almost featureless dunes to
what we called "architectural" dunes with defined sides and
shadows. From there we extended the desert into the distance,
playing with scale and atmosphere. In the end we ended up with a
four layers of space made up of a hybrid of desert and dunes with
some rocky mountains, or heat haze, in the distance."
"The Importance of the job dictated many top level and well
respected opinions from both the agency and client," adds Tim.
"Consequently several high tides did sweep away some perfectly good
sandcastles, but once we built the last one far enough away from
the waves, a universal consensus was reached"
The fun spot included extensive use of matte paintings, 3D
projections, 2D atmospheric elements and the trusty Heat Haze
plugin - all resulting in a very exciting Coca-Cola
competition. Thirst has never looked so fun!
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