Show & Tell - Cadbury World
TV Commercial Production – Birmingham
The second city has many things going for it, that’s part of why we love doing video production work in Birmingham. Aside from the invention of celluloid without which this entire industry wouldn’t exist, it has more public parks than any other city in Europe (571), it was the cradle of the Industrial Revolution (nice try Manchester but no) and having more Michelin starred restaurants than any UK city outside London, it is also home to the world’s best chocolate. FACT.
American chocolate is, generally speaking, the culinary equivalent of a disappointing item of clothing from Shein that looked better in the picture. Swiss Chocolate is the Russel Brand of snacks, a bit pretentious and only idolised by people who should really know better. But Cadbury chocolate is, to coin a technical phrase, awesome.
Everything chocolate-wise from about 5,000 years ago until Wednesday 3rd March 1824 rightly belongs to the Amazons. That’s only fair. But from Thursday 4th March 1824, you can relax lads, Brum’s got it from here. John Cadbury started selling Hot Chocolate and transformed snackage literally forever. Fast forward 73,188 days and the TV commercial we just made for Cadbury World, the place where you can learn all that history, ride brilliant rides, make chocolate and have a 4D Cadbury Adventure, hit the actual airwaves.
So, here’s how that happened
Creature London, is an independent advertising and marketing agency not in Birmingham. Despite this egregious oversight they are very successful, highly astute and all round lovely people. (This latter point was demonstrated repeatedly throughout this process). Their client, Merlin Entertainment, run attractions like Alton Towers, the London Eye and now Cadbury World. They were seeking a production company local to Cadbury World and Google, helped by about 4 years of pretty determined SEO work on our part, brought us together last November to discuss working together.
Pitching a TV Commercial
For a number of reasons it was clear that the new Cadbury World TV commercial production wouldn’t adhere to a lot of the traditional processes used by a lot of the larger London-based commercial video production companies. Being a smaller and more flexible outlier company ended up helping in a number of ways. We were able to work with Creature to maintain a lot of the traditional TV commercial processes whilst dumping some of the more ludicrous ways of doing things bigger companies insist upon.
TV Commercial Treatments
The concept already existed as a detailed storyboard and animatic from the creatives at Creature. The concept had tested well and was signed off, so they were looking for a company and director to bring it to life. Although not a traditional Commercial TV director led-company, we do have directors we work with regularly. The portfolios of 3 directors were put forward and 2 were selected to create treatments. A treatment is a document that details the director’s vision for the ad. They’re like a selection box of ideas. Each is an extension of, and a layer of polish upon, the existing concept. There’s a good lesson in ego here too, the third director put forward whose work wasn’t quite right for this project was me, but we cracked on and we won the work in the end so 🤷. Both of the treatments were of an incredibly high standard and contained a lot of excellent ideas.
A LOT of work goes into treatments and less scrupulous agencies will have many companies and many directors pitching treatments. Thankfully we were spared that, but as an example, the unsuccessful treatment contained a full 3D render of the proposed vision of the entire 30 second commercial in 3D. These documents cover every possible creative aspect, from casting to wardrobe to music, shooting style, editing choices and more and they take serious, serious graft. After a pitch and a few conversations Patrick Killingbeck was selected to direct. We’d previously worked together on our GS-Yuasa TV commercial and the warmth and charisma of the lead performance there demonstrated his experience at getting great performances out of kids. One of the key standouts from Patrick’s treatment was the use of transitions, seamlessly getting the viewer from one scene to the next.
Pre-Production for TV Commercials
To paraphrase the US Navy Seals “people don’t rise to the occasion, they sink to the level of their preparation”. This is why pre-production is where the hardest work is done and we’ve written about how to create TV commercials previously. All of the stuff that was promised in the treatment needs to be realised here. The theory of each of the transitions has to be executed in practice, costume options proffered, agreed and sourced, cast reviewed and auditioned. Once the cast is decided upon they need to be fitted for their costumes etc etc etc.
Costume in TV Commercials
Costume in this case was sourced by the wonderful Deborah Tallentire. Working closely with director Patrick to put together options to show Eva (the main character) as a creative person both in the real world of the talent show, and the magic of her memory, exploring the various rides at Cadbury World.
Filming Locations
Obviously most of the shoot would take place at Cadbury World, but the opening and closing scenes take place in a school or community hall type place. The Cadbury family are famous for their civic contributions to Birmingham, building quality housing for workers, providing schools and green areas. Little known outside of Cadbury World though is the incredible 1,500 seat art deco theatre on site. With a sprinkling of Hollywood magic this was to become the much smaller hall you see in the commercial. The art department from We Are Lunah effectively built a smaller stage on the stage, with curtains and a small proscenium arch to reduce the space. A deliberately worn sign for the talent show, visible stage lighting and other small touches helped to sell the illusion. They were also responsible for various touches around and about the rest of Cadbury World.
Casting
For those starting out in this business, casting is the single most important of any project. Every other element can fail in some way but if the cast can do their magic the audience won’t care. We were very lucky to have (and I don’t want to jinx this but…) absolutely-definitely-going-to-be-a-massive-star Bodhi Rae Breathnach as our main cast member playing Eva.
Model Making in Video Production
They always say surround yourselves with good people. So we got Birmingham based Yamination Studios to build the model that’s the delicious, gooey centre of the ad. This had to be better than great. Yamination is an award winning stop motion animation company; blending tradition, craft and innovation to breathe life into inanimate objects. Their clients include Walt Disney, Coca-Cola, Greenpeace, and Ferrero, to name but a few but notably, one if it’s largest (and most frequent) clients is [mic drop] the Roald Dahl Story Company, where in 2018, Yamination were tasked with creatively leading on it’s Billion-Dollar-15-title-animation-book-option-deal with Netflix. So, y’know, no biggie.
The journey from pitched concept to sketches to mock ups to detailed, flashing, spinning and unfolding production model(s) was so smooth that you could almost describe it as glossy and velvety.
The model had to do two main things. First, it had to represent Eva’s memory of her magical visit to Cadbury World. All of the zones we would see in the film had to be represented on the model. Secondly, it had to look like it could feasibly have been made by a (creatively gifted) pre-teen, this meant a lot of it had to be made from re-purposed, existing materials that a kid might have access to. So, first of all, one of those handy pieces of knowledge I’ll take to my grave is that the design of Yakult bottles is copyrighted, thanks to Creature Producer Niko Browne for that gem. No Yakult then. But also it’s an indication of the level of detail and craftsmanship that an offhand conversation with Yamination founder Drew Roper revealed some of the thought process behind what they were doing. At one point they were going to cover the front area with green felt because that makes sense, right? But how many kids have a roll of green felt at home? No green felt then.
A close look at the detail of the model reveals all kinds of brilliant surprises.
Scheduling a Complex Video Production
I recently came across a thank you letter that Steven Spielberg wrote to his 1st Assistant Director (AD) on his debut feature Sugarland Express. This shows just how vital the scheduling of a job like this is, as well as the management of that schedule from the moment the sun rises on day 1 of production. There’s a methodology of filmmaking pioneered by a group of Danish filmmakers called Dogme which is about putting very strict parameters around the filmmaking process. The Dogme guys obviously never tried filming at a visitor attraction that can’t close to accommodate you. Enormous thanks here to Bailey Marks who, using nothing more than experience, guile and 300 Spartans a 3rd Assistant Director and a couple of runners, a bulletproof schedule and weapons-grade patience managed to successfully hold back the assembled hosts of time, daylight, legal hours of child cast, a theme park, busloads of kids who want to eat chocolate, a dead pixel on the camera, parking and the million other details that go into making big things move without running over people.
How? Planning.
And then we went and shot it.
TV Commercial Production – Cadbury World Style
Video Production Day 1:
Exterior: Cadbury World – Day
Commercial production is strange. Inevitably starting in the grey half light when most people are hitting snooze again, you find yourself in a car park somewhere wondering if that person who just turned up in a Fiat 500 is the 3rd AD you’ve been texting but have never met. Is that your generator over there? Where is the scissor lift? Is that guy parked sideways over two disabled spots with you? If so, can someone go and speak to him because we don’t want to get blamed for that. The callsheet contains the answers to the first 500 questions crew ask but no-one reads past their call time and the location postcode. The 1st AD is looking at his watch as we’re 3 hours behind even though we haven’t started yet. The more grizzled veterans are trying to work out which job they know each other from. Slowly, but surely, the beast begins to move. This is where the rubber hits the road and all the extensive pre-production turns out to have saved you money. Remember, budget isn’t a function of quality, it’s a function of risk.
Much of the morning of day one is spent with me throwing snacks to an 11 year old on a scissor lift as she sits up there with cinematographer Marcus Autelli, shooting exteriors of the front of Cadbury World.
The afternoon is spent in the glorious art deco theatre with the main cast and the Cadbury World model spinning and twirling. They say ‘no plan survives contact with the enemy’ but by the end of the day the shot list is complete and the client is happy.
Video Production Day 2:
We start in the Cadbury 4D cinema at 3pm, having waited for the attractions to quieten down. We’ve got a room full of extras leaping about in their vibrating chairs wearing 3D glasses. Director Patrick is cavorting in front of the cast to get just the right level of joy. Fun fact, the transition at the end of the cinema scene where we spin from here into the next scene was achieved using a periscope lens which physically spins the image around. The effect could have been achieved easily in post production using Adobe After Effects but the truth is it wouldn’t have been quite as good, and not quite as good isn’t the vibe we were aiming for.
As the production moves around the various bits of Cadbury World we’re ensuring people are fed, watered and enthused. Particular shout out to the production team, 3rd AD Claudia Grace McKell, a steely ninja of scheduling discipline, and the runners, Katie Heptinstall, Garv Hora and Lucy Shaughnessy. They’re like the glue that holds things together, if glue were super flexible, infinitely patient and willing to hoik heavy trolleys full of equipment half a mile between locations multiple times. They’re the last line of defence and the nets at the bottom that catch all the things other people missed, or dropped.
The green room on day 2 was provided by the Hub on the Green, a charity community space in the centre of Bournville. Shout out to the nicest people.
The spot was filmed on the Arri Alexa Mini camera using TLS Canon FD lenses. These are lenses that were first built in the 70s and 80s but have been refurbished. This, along with the hard work of the lighting team led by Seb Kudanowski of Fluid Lighting, gave the ad a particularly vintage look that Patrick and Marcus were going for and frankly, it worked.
Post Production
Post Production
Unusually for us the post production went out of house due to schedule and availability. So, the editor was Charlie Moreton at Work. After everything is edited together and signed off it goes to a colorist to apply the final visual polish and give the advert its distinctive look. This was done by Jax Harney at X-LDN, building on Marcus Autelli’s lighting and camera work.
Most of the transitions are achieved practically on set and it’s sort of traditional to pretend there’s no CGI in things these days, but there was a little bit of post production magic going on too. One of our regular cinematographers and 3D master Karl Poyzer built the stripey laser barrel that takes us from the ride to the liquid chocolate in the Cadbury World Have-A-Go zone. That obviously wasn’t real because we didn’t stick a huge camera down a half inch wide laser barrel.
But the transition from real family back to the model family was pretty cleverly done. We matched the two shots by overlaying the images on top of each other on set, which got us about 99.9% of the way towards making it perfect. But the niggly voice of craftsmanship kept whispering that we go get that final 0.1%. We brought in VFX master Vince Lund who did unspeakable CGI black magic to the two shots.
In the screengrab above he’s using photogrammetry to recreate the shot in 3D and the computer is fed each frame to calculate the geometry and camera movement necessary to match the two shots seamlessly.
Finally, the sound design was done by Beresford Cookman. Who still doesn’t have a website but you can find his work here on IMDb.
Throughout this we’ve said a lot of nice things about other people, but the agency had this to say when asked what she would most recommend about working with us:
“The nimble approach to production in generally. Looking at the possibilities from all angles and following through with the best solution for the overall job, rather than the what would benefit them the best. “
We hope you like it, because we really, really do.
If you’re looking for a TV Commercial production company with plenty of experience then please do get in touch.
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