The brief asked for a campaign film that could survive being watched with the sound off. We built the piece around hard colour transitions rather than cuts, so the edit reads as one continuous gesture. Practical gels on set, almost no colour added in post — what you see is what the room did.
Conventional wisdom says avoid midday sun. We built the whole campaign inside it, using the frames themselves as the only reflector on set. The result is a set of stills that feel less styled than found.
The client arrived convinced the product had to appear in frame. It never does. We shot at f/1.2 on location after midnight and let silhouette carry the identity, which turned out to be the most recognisable thing they had.
A deliberate constraint: a single 85mm and no lighting changes for the entire session. Restricting the kit forced the work into performance rather than setup, and the maison ran nine of the frames unretouched.
We storyboarded in long-exposure photography, then matched the film to the stills rather than the other way round. It meant arriving on set with the cut already locked, and finishing a day early.
We wrote it into the treatment: nothing removed, nothing smoothed, colour grade only. Half the pitch was convincing the client it would work. The campaign ran for two years and the clause has been in every treatment since.
