Working for Nespresso : What Else ?
At the end of August 2015, we had the chance to be part of a great adventure. With McCann and Nespresso, we went to Italy for a week to follow the shooting of their latest ad with George Clooney and Jack Black.
We have already had the opportunity to work on other advertising’s making-of / behind-the-scenes (see Cheerios’ behind-the-scenes, for example), but working alongside big stars in this context was a bit different.
The purpose of a making-of
The main purpose of a making-of is to capture the atmosphere a shooting, to seize beautiful moments and show how a shooting is carried out. The difficulty resides in remaining very discrete in order to not disturb people on-set and to let things going in their natural way. This kind of ad requires a huge technical team and important logistical resources: about a hundred people worked for a whole week to produce the different 2015 TV spots. A real hive of activity where everyone has a key role to play.
At the heart of this bustle, a small team of three people from Riot House went to the Lake Como for five days to shoot this making-of video and some social media content: a Director / Camera Operator, an AC to make B-roll footage and finally, a Sound / Time-lapses / Hyper-lapses Supervisor. We also used a drone
in order to produce the opening shot of our making-of video. The purpose was to show this amazing villa and its incredible location on the heights of the Lake Como.
The shooting process
McCann Agency organised the shooting, accompanied by the producer from the Parisian production agency: Moonwalk Films. To go more into details, the DOP was Phedon Papamichael (who was also the DOP on Rasta Rocket, Walk the Line or even Nebraska), the Director on this shooting was Grant Heslov (who has famous projects such as Monuments Men, Good Night and Good Luck, Argo and many others under his belt).
Everybody on-set was friendly and very welcoming: a warm atmosphere that encouraged us to produce beautiful images.
But the most exciting part of the job was to interview George Clooney and Jack Black, in a first time successively and then together. We adapted ourselves to their busy schedule and we had to be very responsive: installation of the stage, lighting, positioning and adjustments of the different cameras and sound settings. We only had 5 minutes per interview.
An amazing memory, a big thanks to McCann, Nespresso and Moonwalk Films for their trust.
