This is really one of the greatest jobs in the world. We get to travel and experience adventures in places most people never get to see in a lifetime, meet new people every day from all walks of life, see a sunrise somewhere abstract in the world and most importantly, get to film amazing jobs which are fun to make. It really is a privilege. I say this because of a recent job I filmed in Cape Town was one of those unexpected ones.
This creative was from Alon Seifert and Sigal Abudi, McCann Tech. Papaya is basically a worldwide platform for multinational payroll. Very simplified! The idea of the script is that a stressed out CFO battles with his inner worries, manifested as a life size game of Whac-a-mole! Fun stuff!
A simple creative idea with an agency and a client who are all for making it as great as possible, is a rare combination. This business is mostly driven by stats, often by a group of individuals who Creative testing, or advertising pre-testing, is a data-driven process that aims to predict how well an ad will perform in the market. It’s the weapon of choice for creative teams to make sure they’re spending their money on ideas that deliver tangible results…….right! What it actually does is kill most of any creative freedom / license that the creatives have, and so delivering insipid ads which please all sorts of marketing territories in all sorts of random places throughout the world.
But not this one! This was a treat to work on, getting better along the way, which is what being creative is partly all about. But this is only possible when you have an agency and a client who also believes in this process. Massive thanks to Kobi Hoffman, EP of Jiminy Creative, its the second time we’ve worked together, looking forward to the next one!
As I said at the start, working in all kinds of different countries means I get to meet loads of different people, film crews etc. Cape Town has the best of the best since so many commercials are filmed there every year. The service prod co was Video Cartel, EP by Pete Verster Cohen and his lovely team. I also love filming with different DOP’s on each job. This time I worked with Robo Wilson, excellent experience! Thanks to Simon (prod designer) who had a hard time but delivered!
The idea is that this CFO is having a panic attack in the office and imagines that all his international employees aren’t getting payed, weirdly he has hammer hands, and then in the middle of nowhere, he starts “whacking” them away hoping the problem will disappear. We basically replicated his office table and made a larger one at the exterior location for the human Whac-a-mole, dug out a big hole underneath the table and stuck all the actors underneath, enough room for them to pop their heads out.
As always, thanks to everyone involved, I hope you all had as much fun as I did. Some more random pics below.
Here’s the official 30″ cut.
