Heineken, When You Drive, Never Drink



MPC Help Re-imagine Jackie Stewarts Story for Heineken

Set to a cover of David Bowie’s ‘Heroes;’ MPC collaborated with Independent Director Gary Freedman and Publicis Milan to re-imagine scenes from Jackie Stewart’s life.

The ad, based on footage from Roman Polanski’s ‘Weekend of a Champion’ gives a glimpse into the historic world of the Monaco Grand Prix, through the eyes of world champion Jackie Stewart. This reimagined tale highlights Stewart’s decision to drive rather than drink.

To create the new footage, the MPC VFX team matched elements of stock footage from a variety of films, adding face and head replacements to the perfectly timed and choreographed shoot and integrated them into new backgrounds.

 

VFX Supervisor Adam Crocker comments “It was a creatively challenging shoot due to the level of detail required to reenact and blend the scenes. The multiple plates and the sheer amount of complex stitching required intricate VFX. But it was all good fun!” 

Global Creative Director of Colour Grading Jean-Clément Soret worked closely with Director Gary Freedman to get the look of the film just right. As it combined multiple layers, it was important the grade tied the film together, yet still gave the individual eras their distinctive looks.

The original footage from Polanski’s film also determined the look of the ad so the new shoot footage was degraded to match. This was done by adding grain, lots of noise and softening the image. Soret comments, “There was a fine balance between an artistic and technical approach. I wanted to be true to the colours of the particular era with each distinctive look, yet also make the film flow perfectly together”.

Gallery

Credits

Agency

Publicis Italy

Production Company

Anorak Berlin/Independent London

Director

Gary Freedman

CEO&ECD Publicis Italy & Global Chief Creative Officer Publicis WW

Bruno Bertelli

Executive Creative Directors Publicis Milano

Luca Cinquepalmi & Marco Venturelli

Associate Creative Director - Copywriter

Bruno Vohwinkel

Associate Creative Director - Art Director

Alessandro Candito

Agency Producer

Mariella Maiorano

Production Company Executive Producer

Christiane Dressler

Production Company Producer

Jason Kemp

DoP

Stephane Fontaine

Editor

Adam Spivey @ The Playroom

VFX

MPC

Creative Director MPC

Bill McNamara

VFX Supervisior

Adam Crocker

Shoot Supervisors

Adam Crocker & Dan Sanders

VFX Producer

Phil Whalley

Lead Compositor

Andreas Feix

Line Producer

Deepanjali Singh

Grade

MPC

Colourist

Jean-Clément Soret

Sound Design

Raja Sehgal @ Grand Central Sound Studio London

VFX Team

Mikael Petterson, Giles Hicks, Dirk Reisenfeld, Dan Benjamin, David Felipe, Tom Harding,Eric Lemains, Denis Krez, Dirk Reisenfeld, Kunal Sukar, Siju Murugan, Mithun Jacob Alex, Sivakumar R, Rajkumar Chidambaram & Jacob Oommen