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BEHIND THE WORK

DOWNHILL

This ad featuring Greg Minnaar the 4 times world downhill champion is aimed specifically at downhill mountain bike riders.

As director Kevin Fitzgerald explains, the approach began with a question:

“Why do these riders risk life and limb and keep coming back over and over again?”

The simple answer is:

“The recurring search for that one elusive moment of euphoria that a great ride delivers.”

The ad is a cerebral exploration of the rider’s mind. The internal emotions he experiences on a ride ranging from terror to wild euphoria. The downhill track comes alive under our hero becoming a frightening, life threatening hazard where every moment could be the riders last. Every innocent looking curve a trap that could kill him.

We hold our breath as the risks mount until, as the voice over explains, “Gravity takes her foot off the pedal…” and he reaches a moment of bliss. The moment that keeps him coming back.

We shot the entire film in live action using a mixture of body mounted cameras and fixed camera positions, then animated the scenes frame by frame. This allowed us to “internalize” the action and to explore the hyperbole.

We used organic “found” objects to create the layers such as the crow and Greg’s wings as well as the forest textures. The decision to use animation to tell this story was in the end an easy one.

Ruan Vermeulen who heads up Rave Growl and I are great friends and he immediately understood the potential (although perhaps not the difficulty) of creating this story in animation. It was never our intention to rely on a high octane, X-games approach. Instead, we wanted to create a surreal world that explored the rider’s internal journey as much as the external one.

It was a massive challenge! With Kevin hounding the team on the story details and a looming deadline the pressure became intense. We decided to use Greg Minnaar’s voice as he is such an icon of the sport and is recognisable within the downhill community. A 3D model of Greg was built and his riding style and moves mimicked.

The music is a take on Mozart’s Turkish March which was used in various forms across the campaign. This version was deliberately “punked” to work with the hard-bitten world of downhill.

GUITAR

This ad featuring numerous guitarists is aimed specifically at guitar players.

The challenge was to find a way to reach a diverse group of guitarists and bind them together as a unified group with a conceptual truth that they would all recognize and appreciate.

To begin with we chose a piece of music that they would all respect regardless of their playing style. In my ignorance I chose a piece that I thought sounded relatively easy and familiar, Mozart’s Turkish March.

As it turns out this was not the case but as often happens it led to some magical moments as the guitarists struggled to come to terms with the technical challenges of the music.

This battle then became central to the ad.  

The decision to use portraiture as a visual style for this ad allowed us to study the nuances of each player and allow each one to express their own unique quirks.

TATTOO

The challenge with this project was to unlock the narrative hidden within the art of the tattoo. No single tattoo will do the art justice in terms of it’s history, it’s diverse styles or it’s personal significance. We had to navigate this carefully so as not to alienate any part of the tattoo community while staying true to the simple “ink and skin” concept.

The realization that a large proportion of tattooists are also classical fine artists gave us a clue a to an approach to the project.

We decided to focus on the hand poke style of tattooing mainly because of the synergy between the brand and this form of the art.  

In a sense the subject matter chose the visual language for us. The unusual framing, the abstract close ups, exploring this surprisingly dramatic world, looking at the symbolism and the tools of the artist rather than the actual tattoos. We made the decision to deliberately restrict the colour palette in order to force us to look at the hidden detail rather than the obvious beauty of the tattoos themselves.

When studied in a macro environment the ink, water, plastic, skin and metal take on interesting and unexpected nuances. They can be surprisingly beautiful.

The music for the campaign was reworked by guitarist Nibs van der Spuy to suit the tempo and style of this ad.