When given a full day to create concepts for a brand you can take your time, do your research and fully develop your ideas. However, sometimes some of our best ideas appear before us when given a very short deadline. Bacardi Gold approached us not long ago to create two Vine videos showcasing how to make the perfect Cuba Libre. Our timeline for concepting was in the realm of 1 hour. Our team developed 5 ideas for the Brand in which they chose the final two.
The first was to create a machine with a conveyor belt that would make the perfect Cuba Libre. The second was what we referred to as the “Bacardi Pool.” A giant pool with a diving board where all the ingredients would dive in making a rather large Cuba Libre and a girl would walk out onto the diving board, pull out a straw, give it a stir and take a sip.
For the Bacardi Machine we used PVC pipes, bar glasses, plastic sheets, a recycled soda to-go cup, cardboard and gaffer tape for the materials and then stuck to a gold, silver and black color scheme to create a sleek and sexy industrial setting. The set was built with two tiers and a slide connecting the two. At the end of the video a hand reached in, grabbed the drink and then we cut to a shot of a model drinking on the beach. It just so happened that we also had a shoot with a model in Coney Island around the same time, so we shot the beach scene before the rest of the video. If there is one thing our team is great at it’s multitasking!
Fishing line was another imperative factor in this video, not only for keeping the glass upright while going down a slide, but also for lifting the full bottle of Bacardi and manipulating the ice. Whenever you have to hold up a heavy object with fishing line we suggest wearing gloves as it can be very hard on your hands. As for the ice we needed to show it descending into the glass, so we froze the ice with fishing line inside it. This is one of our favorite tips and came in handy for both videos. If you ever try it be sure to make lots of ice and tape down the string on the sides to keep it organized so it doesn’t get tangled.
After we wrapped on this shoot we rewarded ourselves with a delicious Bacardi Gold Cuba Libre.
The second video we shot was the “Bacardi Pool”. We went with a very simple set with this one; a glass flower pot that looks like a large drinking glass or pool, a white background and a white diving board made out of foam core. The video started with four ice cubes sitting on top of one another and they dove into the pool one at a time, so having ample amount of ice cubes with fishing line in them was crucial. The more difficult part was making sure we got all our shots quickly enough that the ice didn’t melt.
The end of the video included a girl walking out on the diving board and drinking the Cuba Libre. For this we used one of our favorite techniques, which is photographing a model on a simple white background doing the movement and then making tons of paper cut outs of her and using those in the video. While this video didn’t have as many cut outs as past videos, we still had 36 cut outs of our model. That is a lot of cutting, so making sure you have a good pair of scissors is a must. A pair of scissors can be found pretty much anywhere in our studio, because we are always cutting something out.
This technique allows us to make our models as big or small as we want. As well as the props they are interacting with. We used a real straw and wrapped the cut outs around the straw to keep it 3D. The result was amazing.
