After teasing for months, our spec shoot featuring Greyskies Beer is finally live HERE!
We finally got round to wrapping up our Spec beer ad. An idea conceived in lockdown 1, test shoot just after lockdown 2, and finally shot in lockdown part 3 on a covid secure set. This covid business really did a number on us filmmakers.
THE IDEA
The idea came to us during lockdown 1 as a creative exercise of what we could do with extremely minimal crew and resources. We had been bingeing tutorials and throwing around ideas of many specs. We decided to do a beer showcase first, a short which is tailored towards a social media post (instagram), as it was most achievable with no crew.
A friend of Brickoven had recently started a beer company, so we decided to base the spec around their branding. We didn’t want to do a generic beer spec as we always try to pull the story from the brand in whatever we do.
THE TEST SHOOT
‘SH*TTY RIGS!’ –
We built the idea around the Greyskies brand using their stylesheet and thought it would be fun to try to do something more practical rather than CG. Our idea was that the umbrella would swoop in to save the beer from the downpour with the subtext being the beer can be enjoyed any weather rain or shine. Classic Mancunian branding right there!
We found the props online and with a B&Q trip later we had our rain rig mk1 :
We then set out on the test day to try to build the lighting setup for the master shot as a mix of proof of concept and as that would be the setup for all the other shots. This also meant that if we cracked it when it came to the shoot we could purely focus on getting the shots and not the setup.
THE SHOOT
Before the shoot, we used the test footage as a base and made an edit. We then used this edit as a shot guide. We also had a special gift from ‘PROP PAPI’ with the new and improved RAIN RIG V2 *patent pending*
On the day we spent time really finessing the best angles and shots so we would have plenty of coverage for the edit. All in all, it went smoothly apart from the beer attempting to float away on the polystyrene when the tray began to fill up. These are the kind of things you can’t plan for. POST-PRODUCTION
The edit came together fairly smoothly, with the first one lacking the punch we were after (as with all first passes). We workshopped it with a few industry peers and the team at Greyskies until we had an edit we were happy with. The main change came with the clouds going from purely practical to having some VFX goodness overlaid on them. We did this to really breathe some life into the intro, enhancing the clouds with a little vapor and soft light as the 2D cards fell flat and let the whole edit down.
IT’S A WRAP!
After a grade, a sound design and foley session, and a very thorough edit to around the 15-second mark, it was off to Youtube to upload and post. We’re planning on doing an in-depth BTS video soon so make sure to subscribe to our YouTube to catch it when it comes out. We plan to be uploading a lot more to the channel from now on.
For a scaled-down shoot we ended up really happy with the final product and it was great to flex our creative muscles once again. We have learned a lot along the way and can’t wait to use this knowledge on the next product shoot.
Have a product you want to get noticed? Feel free to get in touch to make it happen.
We want to send a huge thanks to Greyskies Beer for providing us with a generous selection of their products. If you want to support this new indie Manchester brewery then click THIS LINK and grab yourself an online order.
Brick
