BRYLCREEM ‘Effortless Fresh’

Executing a 1-take trick shot is never easy. I’ve done it on a job several years back, & know the complexities involved. It may look easy in the final visual, but it’s nothing but. Now, imagine when you’ve got 3, 1-take trick shots to do in 1 commercial! That’s the challenge we were tasked with, but we accomplished them in the end. And that’s essentially the idea for the new revived Brylcreem brand, to comeback with that wow factor visually. From the minds of Ensemble – an arm of Universal McCann’s – & with production support from Play Pictures, we worked with Unilever to execute an almost fun & seamless spot that will hopefully be remembered. There was a lot of discussion on whether & how we could cheat the 1-take shots, but I always insisted on doing it real. Nothing beats the real thing, gravity, trajectory, etc. I did wonder if we did indeed shoot ourselves in the foot with the amount of tries, but the end result speaks for itself; seamless & almost effortless cool guys doing cool tricks. Our talents were real troopers as they braved the heat, always eager to support each other with their macho bro attitudes regardless of time of day. Each character had a specific skill we wanted to focus on, so in the end, everyone’s a hero. We mocked up the open-air concept locker room in a Putrajaya car park, so that we didn’t have to run to too many locations in the 1 shoot day.   While it certainly was fun & a great experience, I think it’ll be a while before I attempt another 1-take trick shot, let alone 3 J . Shot using the Red Epic with DP Nick Lee, we completed color grading at Meccanica FX & the rest of post-production at Play Pictures.