Fin.

Our brief

Fin was commissioned to produce a series of mouth-watering sponsorship idents for Unilever’s Ice Cream brand Carte D’Or.

The destination programming was a combination of individual ITV series, like Scott & Bailey, Murder She Wrote and others, generically branded as 'Mystery Dramas.'

The term “Food Porn” was briefed out to describe the high-end look desired. The idents were to be used on daily programming, so a high number of variants were needed for rotation to limit multiple repeats.

Our approach

Shot in a stylish, live-action series of ultra close-ups, we devised the DESSERT MYSTERY creative, to link the idents with the Mystery Dramas. We wanted to convey that making a dessert with Carte D'Or at its centre was 'no mystery.' We developed this into a mini-visual 'hinted' narrative about quickly creating a simple last minute pudding, using a range of tightly framed dessert preparation shots. No people are in vision, apart from the occasional female hand or heels.

The gorgeous looking food was to be the star.

To do this, we filmed very simple, different dessert pairings, each clearly led by Carte D’Or, with fruits, chocolate and dressings. The goal was to convey that it's easy to make any kind of dessert with simple ingredients if you have a tub of Carte D’Or Ice Cream...hence the brand message: “Once you’ve got Carte D’Or, you’ve got dessert.”

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google+

In production

In order to capture the highest quality images, we decided to shoot the commercial on a Red Digital Cinema camera at high speed. Shooting at 4k (Cinema Res) and using Ultra Prime Macro lenses, we were able to pick up enormous detail in every shot.

One of our biggest challenges was to film the “Virgin” scoop of the Ice Cream and capture the classic “curling shot”. In pre-production, we conceived a variety of ways to film this sequence, from mechanical turntables, scoops on tripod arms, Lazy Susan’s, with tubs fastened, turned by hand…. In the end, a trusty director's steady hand and DOP’s guidance was what was needed!

Again we enlisted the help of 'Food Stylist to the Stars', Rebecca Rauter, to create our final desserts and provide delicious ingredients and props for the shoot.  After going through 28 tubs of ice cream, 6 finished desserts and 12 separate food items were shot in a one day studio shoot. The DOP was James Buck and the Camera Assistant Tom Webster, the indents were finished in-house on Avid Media Composer and graded in Pablo.