Juicy Drop

Van breakdown, flooded skate park, cameras with heat stroke: a Saturday morning kids advert shot in Valencia against the odds.

What Did We Do?

Another road trip, this time to Valencia. Our trusty wee van, which has crossed Europe more times than most lorries, chose this job to break down two hours from the destination. Four hours on the side of a blazing Spanish motorway later, we were collected, and the brilliant local production company arranged a hire van. Then a monster thunderstorm flooded the outdoor skate park we were due to film at, and people worked through the night pumping and sweeping the water out.

The next morning we set up a 48 camera bullet time rig with two Z CAMs filming 4K at 120 frames per second for the lead in and lead out footage. The heat climbed until the cameras started throwing heat errors, something we had only seen once before, when an ARRI M18 melted a camera in a studio. We shaded the rig until the internal temperatures dropped and got every shot we needed.

It was our first full on kids’ TV advert, the kind we used to watch on Saturday mornings waiting for the cartoons to come back. Van breakdown, flood and heatwave included, we would do it again tomorrow.

More From The Set

More from the build and the shoot. Click any image for a closer look.