60 Seconds with Nathan Kane, The Mill’s Shoot Supervisor on Super Bowl LIV’s Bud Light commercials with Post Malone
What was The Mill’s involvement in the making of Bud Light ‘Inside Post’s Brain’ and ‘Post’s Mango Experience’?
It was great to team up with Weiden+Kennedy and Jim Jenkins again for this year’s Bud Light Seltzer Super Bowl campaign. We were involved from the very early stages of pre-production, talking with Jim’s team at O Positive, through the supervision of the shoot in Los Angeles and Utah and finally the completion of all the post work with our team here in New York. The main work we had to do in post was create the transition into Post Malone’s eye and the extensive CG set extension in the ‘brain”s control room.
What challenges did the team face?
Delivering two completely different 60 sec Super Bowl spots is always going to be challenging, but throw a celebrity talent’s limited availability into the mix and timelines get even more challenging. We actually delivered the Mango Experience spot less than a week after filming the scenes with Post Malone in the bar.
From a visual effects standpoint, the most challenging task was creating the eye transition. We needed to create a CG takeover of Post Malone’s eye as we get so close to it would’ve been impossible to shoot it practically and maintain perfect focus and detail. Transitioning from a 50mm macro lens to a 16mm wide lens both traveling at different speeds and making it feel smooth wasn’t easy and needed extensive testing before we got it right.
What was the best part of this project?
The whole project was fun from start to finish, it’s always a lot of fun working with Jim and the team at Weiden & Kennedy. The spots are comedies and the atmosphere on set was awesome, watching the guys coming up with hilarious lines and seeing the way Jim works with the actors to get the best performance was very impressive.
Also getting to meet and work with Post Malone, I wasn’t too familiar with his music before the shoot, but he’s a really humble guy and was a pleasure to work with.
Can you tell us about the voting element in this year’s Bud Light Super Bowl spots?
The agency had the idea to release both spots online at the same time the week of the game and have the public vote to help Bud Light decide what spot they were going to run for the big game. It created so much online buzz and after the first day it had created more online interactions than last year’s spot did in total, so a huge success.
Tell us about something from Super Bowl LIV that inspired you?
Obviously, all the work the artists across all offices of The Mill did to help create 29 spots in this years Super Bowl is incredible and truly inspiring.
On a personal note, I was lucky enough to attend this years Super Bowl down in Miami. It was an amazing experience, such a special atmosphere surrounding the game, an incredible comeback by the Kansas City Chiefs and probably the best half time show in the history of the Super Bowl. Also, the fact that they played the ‘Inside Post’s Brain’ spot on the big screen in the stadium was an added bonus for me.
