Binge Drinking campaign

The Skinny

The ads are part of a bid by the Queensland Treasury Department to warn of the potentially ugly consequences of binge drinking. The Gallery Group and B Films edited at Cutting Edge to create graphic and gruesome imagery that had the ability to shock young drinkers.

Director Brendan Williams, producer Claire Davidson and post production supervisor Sam Couzens, all of B Films, jumped at the chance to work on this campaign. Two of the spots are aimed at the young drinkers themselves, while the third targets secondary suppliers – parents who facilitate binge drinking by supplying alcohol to their kids.

The Gallery Group team including creative director Phil Nobay and art director Sean Condon, created the dark and graphic campaign. With a tagline ‘Every Drink Counts’, the spots focus on the rapidity with which units of alcohol accumulate through binge drinking, and how they can jump alarmingly in the case of alcopops and pre-mixed drinks.

“Our audience is a generation of people who have been there, done that. You’ve got to work hard to impress them”, said Williams. Davidson adds, “This campaign is a great opportunity to show our young audience that dark, evil behaviour can accompany binge drinking. More importantly, how in the blink of an eye, that behaviour can spiral out of control and turn their life upside down - when they least expect it.”

The Production

The commercials were filmed in bars, nightclubs, hotels, streets, alleys and houses which were all real locations. The shoot was a combination of many cameras. The directer/D.O.P shot predominantly 35mm film, but incorporated Panasonic HD, P2, Sony HDV, and Canon 5D still cameras as additional units.

Sometimes the mixed bag of cameras were for budgetary reasons, other times it was used intentionally to create a particular effect. For example in the scene where the hero man was run over and killed by the car the viewing format shifts from 35mm to HDV which was desaturated to simulate a camera phone.

One of the most memorable scene would be the filming of the dance floor scene, in the ‘Alley’ commercial. The energy in the room was amazing. There were 50 extras on the centre of the main dance floor in one of Brisbane’s top nightclubs. The team set up a circular track around the extras and filmed some magic moments.

The storyboard was used as a tool of reference. How the shot looked once it was lit and framed was the determining factor to how close the storyboard was followed.

The Post

Post production was completed for the three commercials in around four weeks. The offline was completed in Avid and conformed using Smoke and graded in da vinci. Visual effects in Shake. Online and visual effects in Inferno.

Because there were multiple formats for this project a common medium had to be worked with. Using Final Cut Pro the video elements were checked on set then laid off onto HD tape for ingestion to the Avid. For ease of workflow the stills were also laid off to HD in four frame intervals along with the one light graded 35mm. This made onlining the completed offline much easier.

The video was graded tape to tape from the HD layoff while the film was graded off the neg. Once the offline was conformed and graded selected shots were sent out to visual effects on shake while other effects shots were completed in inferno.

The sound was composed from scratch with versions being updated through the offline and online process. The scene in the Crash commercial where the man morphs in a bullet time effect was the most memorable. Due to budget constraints, several shooting formats were used and to be combined in a seamless manner. ASIAIMAGE