Engine produces new character-based Mount Franklin tvc for Coca-Cola via McCann Sydney
Engine recently completed the new, character-based Mount Franklin TVC for Coca-Cola and McCann Sydney highlighting the brand’s more environmental approach to bottle production.
Says Engine CD Simon Robson: “After winning the pitch we got the brief which involved a simple narrative about the new Mount Franklin ‘Easy Crush’ bottle that uses 35% less plastic.”
Robson and the Engine team began developing an idea from the McCann Sydney script that was based on the children’s nursery rhyme of ten green bottles standing on a wall.
McCann Sydney Head of TV Ros Payne, said: “Engine did a fantastic job with the Mount Franklin ‘Easy Crush’ commercial. Simon Robson came up with some brilliant ideas and the whole production went incredibly smoothly. It was a pleasure working with Engine on this project and the results are outstanding.”
Robson continued: “McCann Sydney referenced the children’s book illustrator Jeannie Baker as they really liked the ‘relief collage’ style of her work. Jeannie’s work is incredibly complex and relies upon layering up flat sculpted natural elements to create the picture. We took inspiration from Jeannie’s work, but developed the idea to look more like an ornamental Australian outback set, with finely crafted trees and animals. As Mount Franklin is all about natural Australia we also wanted this spot to reflect this. Our lead illustrator Lilian Darmono did a great job of interpreting all of the elements and making them fit the storyline.”
Darmono created many different animals and illustrations which Robson and his team then developed into a 3D world.
Robson added: “We used natural textures, bringing them into 3D to create birds made of fabric, a frog made of grained wood, a beaded caterpillar and a wood-hinged toy-look lizard amongst a wonderful background painting with great colours bringing them all together. Our goal was to choreograph the outback animals so they move around the bottles without distracting from them.”
To incorporate the bottles into the spot, Robson and the team pre-vis’d camera moves and bottle crushes in 3D and then shot the bottles with a Red Epic on a motion control camera rig in the Engine studio.
Robson continued: “Our stand-by props guy created three different rigs to crush down the Mount Franklin bottles so we’d get an organic variety in the way the bottles crushed. Our in-house 3D department then composited the bottles in Flame at Engine. I’m delighted to say, when all was said and done, both Coca-Cola and McCann Sydney alongside all of the Engine team were delighted with the results.”
MCann credits:
ECD: Oliver Maisey
CD: Kieran Flanagan
Copywriter: Jessie Jordan
Art Directors: Damien Sloan, Christie Peolwane
Agency Producer: Ros Payne
Engine credits:
Director: Simon Robson
Executive Producer: Adam Wells
Producer: Chris Seeto
Illustrator: Lilian Darmono
Lead 3D Artist: Max McMullin
3D Character Animation and Modelling: Shaun Schellings
3D Modeller: Elias Atto
3D Modeller: Chris Norris
VFX Supervisor: Scotty Wilcox
Editor: George Kacevski
DoP: Calvin Gardiner ACS
Flame Artist: Chris Leaver
Flame Artist: Joel Osis
Picture credits:
Stills from the Mount Franklin’s “Easy Crush Bottle” 30-second TVC created by Engine
3 Comments
Oh, McCann, you’ve done it again.
I guess 35% less plastic is a start- naturally the bottle is more crushable. To link it to “Green” bottles on a wall is a stretch.
Anyone noticed bottled water by volume is dearer than premium fuel?
Managing to light and photograph live-action plastic bottles, with in-camera effects, to make them look like non-photoreal 3D objects composited into a diorama of mechanical 2D objects and backgrounds drawn from the natural world, all somehow intended to relate to the product’s ‘more environmental approach’.
Now there’s a technique and a strategy you don’t see too often.
Guess you could call it 35% more plastic?