Anchor Hot Chocolate: The Making Of
Last Christmas, we made a commercial.
and the very next day, we were still shooting.
Just a heads-up: this blog post may make you view the Anchor Hot Chocolate commercial in a completely new light-one you might never unsee! If you haven’t watched our commercial film for Anchor Hot Chocolate yet, do that now and then come back here.
Ever wondered what goes into creating some of those 30-second ads you see on TV in between your favourite movies (yes, the ones that rerun about 50 times a month)? Some are annoying, some are funny, and a few stand out as heartfelt enough to tug at your heartstrings. So, let's "Take a moment" and show you how we made Christmas with Anchor Hot Chocolate.
If i'm being honest, as the editor on this, and in general, working in the commercial production space changes the way you see those back to back commercials. I find myself in constant analysis, trying to figure out how they did this, that, and what not. It goes something like this:
Where the heck is this place in Sri Lanka?
The editor must've hated this song...
How on earth did they do that???
And I know it's not just me - this is normal speak in the industry, especially when it's a really good commercial. A DOP can't not think about how the shot looks and a producer can't not estimate how much it would've cost. My boss however has an easy-fix-alternative to every "complicated" shot we see in just about any commercial. That mechanical engineering degree does come in handy (most of the time).
Having been there to witness the ideation and pre-production process, I noticed that we hadn't shot a few of the shots we had initially planned, way before it went through pipelines. Personally, If we had the allocation of extra time both on the shoot day(s) as well as in the video itself, I feel it would've taken this commercial to whole new heights. Here's one of the sequences:
The camera zooms across the steaming Hot Chocolate which transitions to the living room, filled with decorations, only to reveal that the shot is upside down. The reason for this is because it's the POV of the daughter who is looking at her mother topping the Christmas tree with the Star.
Shot by Shot
This Shot above lasts for approximately under a second if not on the dot. How long did it take to shoot? How many people made that shot possible?
The reason this shot took so long was for a number of reasons:
Getting enough light to expose the Hot Chocolate mix with a probe lens.
Shaping the powder to make it look like the aesthetic mountains of Belgium.
Getting the right 'scoop'.
