High Five: Penny Verbe

The five of us had just set up Smoke & Mirrors, using our houses as collateral which certainly gives you a fair amount of motivation. We had two flames set up in some barely decorated rooms in Covent Garden. Somehow Vaughan and Anthea, the eponymous directing duo, and Sir John Hegarty and Phillipa Crane at BBH, trusted we could help them make this incredibly full on VFX-laden ad for them. The tech was still nascent and tended to crash - think hundreds of layers, five-day renders...if you got it wrong, you had to start all over again. I think we had about six weeks for production, which sounds like a long time now but back then was nothing like enough time. I don’t think any of us had more than a few hours’ sleep a day (if we were lucky). Somehow we managed it. I’m still not quite sure how but the adrenaline certainly helped. It will always have a place in my heart, it’s a little bit bonkers, very stylish and put us on the map thanks to the help and belief of some very talented, supportive, and quite frankly, patient people.

Fabulous script, casting, direction and post-production, of course. Not only an epic mini feature film but it almost never made it to the big screen. Directed by the lovely Jonathan Glazer, I remember getting a phone call to say some enterprising Argentinians had stolen the negative and were holding it to ransom, as their economy had crashed big time. Best excuse I’ve ever heard to move a schedule. Getting this on air seemed like a huge achievement.