The making of a commercial film for Shick.

“We want a film about the way peo­ple relate to their skin.

That’s all Schick told us when they con­tact­ed us regard­ing a poten­tial com­mer­cial project that would kick­start a pre­sen­ta­tion about their upcom­ing prod­uct launch­es for their North Amer­i­can reps. That, and the fact that they need­ed deliv­ery in just under a month. We were hap­py to oblige.

The icing on the cake was that we had com­plete cre­ative con­trol — some­thing that is rare for this type of project, where we’d usu­al­ly be work­ing along­side a direc­tor and a myr­i­ad of cre­ative and tal­ent agen­cies. Instead, we were the cre­ative, copy, and art depart­ment all in one.

Due to the tight time­line (although final deliv­ery was a month away, they need­ed a rough cut with­in two weeks), we only had one week­end to pre­pare a con­cept pre­sen­ta­tion. We draft­ed up a hand­ful of ideas on Fri­day night, but none that we were com­plete­ly in love with. We slept on it. We were glad we did, because the next day, we con­cep­tu­al­ized a winner.

Skin keeps us togeth­er, lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly. It’s the pri­ma­ry ves­sel for human inter­ac­tion — it’s the bridge that con­nects us all. From the small­est touch to the tight­est hug, our goal was to show that skin is what dri­ves togeth­er­ness. We put the copy togeth­er for the nar­ra­tion, and on Mon­day we were ready to present our idea.

They loved it, but before we could jump into pre-production, we need­ed approval from their human resources depart­ment. Not for the idea, not for the bud­get, but for the entire project.

We wait­ed a day, then days, then a week. The project had come to a halt, and because of the scope of the idea, any day lost made pulling the whole thing off expo­nen­tial­ly more dif­fi­cult. But we were in love with the project, and we were will­ing to do any­thing to make it work. At the two-week mark, we got the green light and our chance to do just that.

Two weeks until deliv­ery meant just three days to draw out and get our sto­ry­boards over to Schick for final approval, scout loca­tions, find tal­ent, and sched­ule out a very hec­tic five days of shoot­ing. One final chal­lenge: the project required more tal­ent than Schick had bud­get­ed for. No tal­ent bud­get meant we had to reach out to all our dear friends and actors we know to be in our film. As a tes­ta­ment to what amaz­ing friends we have, every­one we asked said yes!

Our tech­ni­cal approach was a visu­al exten­sion of our con­cept. We want­ed to sub­merge the audi­ence into dif­fer­ent scenes of every­day peo­ple inter­act­ing with one anoth­er, but we need­ed to make it clear that skin is what facil­i­tates these dif­fer­ent inter­ac­tions. So, with a trusty 100mm Macro, we shot extreme close-ups of each scene, get­ting up and close on the actors’ skin as they con­nect. This is the type of project that we would have loved to shoot on a C300, but because of how tight the shoot­ing sched­ule was, and how quick­ly we had to set­up in some instances, we found our 5D Mark IIIs were the per­fect pieces of gear to tack­le the project with.

In the end, the final prod­uct looked exact­ly as we had envi­sioned (at times, even bet­ter) and that’s an incred­i­ble accom­plish­ment on its own. Because of the sched­ul­ing, by the time Schick got to see a rough cut, it was pret­ty much a final cut with­out any colour grad­ing. Thank­ful­ly, they were blown away.

We went back to fin­ish the colour and mas­ter the audio, and deliv­ered the final prod­uct one day early!

It was a crazy expe­ri­ence mak­ing this film and we had all the odds stacked against us. There were enough “near-impossibilities” that declin­ing the project alto­geth­er made a lot more sense than tak­ing it on. But we loved the chal­lenge, and knew we could pull it off. Luck­i­ly for us, Schick was­n’t look­ing for some­thing that fol­lowed the tra­di­tion­al com­mer­cial for­mat. They went with us because they liked our style, and want­ed us to make a film, not an ad. That made work­ing on this project feel more like we were cre­at­ing a per­son­al piece and allowed us to take some risks that we would­n’t nor­mal­ly take on a com­mer­cial for a client.

Again, we can’t thank all our friends, actors, and cou­ples (both past and present) enough for help­ing us out through­out the shoot — we could­n’t have done it with­out all of you!

You can watch the film below. As always, let us know what you liked about it and what you con­nect­ed with the most!