Feast Your Eyes on Bites’ Sweetest Ads for World Chocolate Day

A waterfall of glistening ganache, a cocoa-dusted canyon, mocha swirls in place of Saturn’s rings: if you can imagine it, Bites Studio’s SFX team can create it – in chocolate.

In honour of World Chocolate Day this Sunday, July 7th, the real life Willy Wonkas are lifting the lid on the practical magic behind their Kinder Bueno, Ghirardelli, and E. Wedel campaigns, featuring the sweet stuff in all its diverse forms.

Grab your favourite bar and read on to find out which shoot involved bringing 2000 litres of melted chocolate on set.

Above: Bites’ chocolate, coffee, and cream reel for 2023

Kinder Bueno

First up is ‘Two Worlds’, a celestial spot for Kinder Bueno. Bites Studio first visualises the snack’s chocolatey outer layer as a deep brown galaxy where the protagonist lounges in a cocoa crater, before cracking it open to reveal a new realm within. Here, hazelnut hot air balloons float among clouds that pour cream into wafer vessels below.

Paweł Kwarciak, SFX lead on the commercial, comments on the challenges of a project of this scale, “We created a two metre waterfall pouring about 50 litres of chocolate at once – an enormous quantity – a giant tray with a sloping bottom and emerging chocolate blocks, plus a tray with a mask from which a stream of chocolate flowed. Managing such quantities of chocolate was a challenge because each effect required the right consistency of the product, and in large amounts.”

Ghirardelli

For American confectioner Ghirardelli, Bites Studio teamed up with repeat collaborator, director Ruben Latre, to craft a poetic film inspired by geological structures. Deep canyons, crumbling earth, and crashing waves are all recreated in chocolate, a feat that involved 33 shots in three days, three robots, six days of tests, 48 people on set – and a whopping 2000 litres of the stuff.

SFX engineers Paweł Kwarciak and Krzysztof Urbaniak reflect on the experience: “We had to redo lots of mockups. It was a challenge, because everything had to be rigged to match the director’s idea. We got a bare shell, a very nice bare shell of this canyon, but in order for something to happen there, we had to activate a lot of our grey matter,” says Paweł.

Krzysztof adds, “With such projects it takes a lot of time to reset the set and prepare it for another take. We got ready for the shot, then we got a shot of chocolate pieces disintegrating in the air and a wave of chocolate flooding it. Then we had to do it all over again, assembling the whole mockup and getting the rigs ready for a repeat shot.”

Above: Behind the scenes of the Ghirardelli campaign from Bites Studio and director Ruben Latre

E. Wedel

Last is a dramatic campaign for E. Wedel, Poland’s oldest and most iconic chocolate brand. Capturing the experience of biting into its ‘Gorzka’ – or dark – chocolate, it features an explosion of textures choreographed to Michael Bublé’s ‘Feeling Good’.

In collaboration with Watchout Studio and 2012 Agency, Bites organised a two-day shoot schedule, deploying two units concurrently. The first unit focused on capturing live-action scenes within a constructed apartment setting; the second unit on producing special effects by employing specialist motion control technology.

"For this E. Wedel project, capturing the bar’s intricate details, shapes, and texture was paramount,” explains Kuba Kozłowski, Bites Studios’ head of production. “Achieving this level of precision required the creation of detailed mock-ups, both of individual pieces and the entire bar, all scaled up from the original product. What followed was the artistry of our special effects team, who transformed these elements into a spectacle of chocolate explosions and cocoa bursts, showcasing their magic and expertise."

For more behind the scenes snippets, check out Bites Studio's Instagram here.