Aproductions Helps Cornetto Break the Ice with Latest Campaign

With the sun returning, one cannot help but think about the upcoming summer, with warmer weather, sandy beaches and, of course, ice cream. Back in September of 2016 Aproductions enjoyed shooting photos for Cornetto and creating the digital side of Unilever and MullenLowe’s recent “Break the Ice” campaign, which also included a TV aspect done by a different production company. This project, led by producer Susan Walker, was shot in Barcelona during the 28th and the 29th, utilising the 30th as a studio day. The locations used included La Barcelonetta (the most famous beach of the city), Stiges Road (along Stiges Beach), la Marbella, the metro stop Mercat Nou and the gardens of the lookout point of Montjuïc (a fortress overlooking the whole city). These six scenarios included a skate scene, a bike scene, a city vibe, a lookout point and more.

A whole studio day was planned into the schedule as each photo required the team to Photoshop together the pictures of the actors in the selected locations with the photos of the hands offering the Cornetto ice cream, as well as make touch-ups and complete all of the usual post-production steps. In order to make the original shots more believable a special rod mimicked the action of the arm offering the ice cream to help the actors pose correctly. The models for this work were Mariana Ontanaya, Carmen Peña, Roman Vodgt, Ivan Lapadula, Diana Postigo and Luis Maesso, and they worked with Nixon Freire, a young, brilliant Brazilian photographer, to produce the six final shots.

As for the ice cream itself, about 600 Cornetto minis were used for this project. The minis presented two difficulties for the crew: they are harder to find than the regular sized ones, but were necessary to create the desired visual outcome, and they had to be kept in coolers in which the ice kept melting due to the hot weather of Barcelona. Another hardship was shooting the street scene was that it was only a block away from a Gaudi building, and therefore was extremely crowded and not ideal for shooting. Even within the limited space available the team was able to setup the video village including a motorhome and a 4m by 4m tent for the client. The ultimate challenged faced was related to the Jeep shot car scene. The Jeep arrived the night before shooting day and the crew realised that they would need to remove the back bar of the car in order to shoot with it the next day. Thanks to the people who worked with a wrench that night in order to remove it, the shoot continued as planned.