Novemba Drums Up a Ballantine's Campaign

Cap Gun directing duo Novemba is no stranger to making docemantary projects for brands and this one for Ballantine's further cements the pair's credentials.

Following Ben Mead, a drummer who starred in a recent Ballantine's TV spot, the film delves deeper into his life and passion for drumming as well as creating the 'shape of sound' using some impressive technology and no small amount of passion and skill.

Below, the pair [Blair Macdonald, below right, and Oliver Clark, below left] reveal their thoughts on the projects, how they achieved it and who the most rock'n'roll drummer ever is...

Tell us a little bit about this project; what was the brief you received and what was your interpretation of it?

We became involved with the project at an early stage, when we were briefed to create a film about Ben Mead, the star of Ballantine’s most recent TVC The Drummer [below]. The film was to be part documentary and part experiment, bringing to life Ben’s story and linking back to Ballantine’s positioning, “Stay True, Leave An Impression”. 

‘Light painting’ with drum sticks was something that Ben, the agency behind the production and we all wanted to explore right from the start.

You mentioned that Ben Mead appeared in a previous Ballantine’s commercial; do you know if there was always a plan to further explore him and his drumming?

The TVC was received very well globally and there was momentum from people wanting to know exactly who the commercial’s lead character was. Ben was selected for the original role as a result of his story and the way that he has stayed true to his own direction throughout his life. This is something that people wanted to know about.  

You’ve shot a number of documentary films for commercial projects; have you purposely aimed to shoot that type of content?

Documentary work was our first love as directors, and it’s something we have a great passion for. In the past 12 months we’ve had a lot of success shooting documentary content for brands all over the world and people are now coming to us directly, which is great.

Do you think this type of film content is going to become more and more prevalent as brands look to increase their output and engagement with consumers?

Totally. Documentary content, done right, has a very powerful resonance with an audience, and often generates greater residual value over traditional TV advertising.  

How did you first envision ‘the shape of sound’?

Sound can be visually translated into waveforms but this doesn’t represent the physicality of playing the drums, of movement, or the space between each hit of the drum. We wanted to capture the shape of Ben’s performance, as he played experimented with different styles and rhythms live in a studio.

What were the technical difficulties in making this film happen, and making sound a visual experience?

Creating the light trail effect in-camera was the main technical difficulty. The ‘shape of sound’ sequence was made possible through the help of Louis Mustill and his talented team at Artists & Engineers.

Together, we tried and tested a number of techniques and approaches to pull it off. Achieving the effect as a post production technique was certainly possible, but never considered, as we wanted to pull the effect of organically.

Can you explain a little bit about how the process works?

A bespoke application was developed using the Cinder creative coding framework. The application takes a HD video feed from the main shooting camera and isolates the LED-tipped drumsticks. The trails are not computer generated, but come directly from the images being captured from the camera, creating light trails of the desired length and intensity.

In addition, a 360 degree time-slice rig was used to capture the light trails in 3D. This was simply done by using four second exposures on a 32 DSLRs set rig provided by Drop City.

Have you done anything like this before and is it the most technically complex film you’ve worked on?

This is the most technically complex film we’ve made to date, and a steep learning curve for the two of us. But that was part of the attraction to the project: we’re always looking to extend our capabilities as filmmakers, to experiment and try new things, and this was a great opportunity to do so.

What was the hardest part of the shoot?

Watching Ben play the drums and finally admitting to ourselves that we will never be rockstars!

What are you working on next?

We’ve just returned from America where we were shooting a new branded doco. Again, we were trying something new with this piece, combining fictional elements with non-fiction ones, to create something that is altogether quite strange.

We’ve also just started shooting scenes for a feature length sports doco that we are developing this year.

Who do you think is the most rock ‘n’ roll drummer ever?

Rick Allen from Def Leppard lost his arm in an accident and continued to play the drums with only one arm. Hard to get more rock’n’roll than that.