Their proposal to split directing duties between Chuck Studios founder Olaf van Gerwen and OB Management’s Josh Cohen was a great idea: Josh’s distinct visual style gave Olaf new inspiration to design fresh angles and movements. Josh and Olaf collaborated in making a unique shot list and plan, teams would fly out to Cape Town for live-action location shooting and jet over to Amsterdam for all things fizzy.
We would love to say the production was smooth sailing without many hiccups. But unfortunately, we ended up tackling a few tiny-big complications down the road.
Soon after production kicked off in beautiful Cape Town, half the crew was infected by a nasty stomach bug. And as if things couldn’t get any worse, Covid-19 surprised us with yet another variant.
We were shooting at the very birthplace of the Omikron variant and air traffic from South Africa was lifted immediately and globally. With luck, we found our way home, but the live-action team was stuck in Ireland.
Olaf was forced to quarantine and shoot dates were booked, so Olaf had to direct the shoot from his house, literally 800 meters away from the studios. Very frustrating, but thank you universe, for the internet.
Simultaneously, the photography shoot was taking place in our second studio Erik de Koning shot no less than 86 visuals in a five-day shoot, while using multiple sets. We were told that MPC, in charge of post-production and versioning, completed the longest deliverables list in the history of their existence.
We’d like to thank Josh and the team at OB Management for seamless cooperation, 180 Amsterdam for the creativity and awesome production support, and mostly Pepsico’s 7UP for the trust.
We’ll meet again!