How Moju Woke Up Mornings with Channel 4 Breakfast Idents

Merman’s Will Clark and UNIT’s creative director Tom Wansbrough-Jones talk to LBB about their latest breakfast campaign for MOJU.

Q> Tell us more about the project and how it came about?

Will Clark> When I first read the concept, I thought it sounded completely nuts. I had no idea how we would make people fly out of cuckoo clocks and that was what appealed to me. With the creatives Alex and Conrad, we chatted together about how it could be achieved. I knew we would probably be doing wire work, but I wanted the performers to feel like real people with comedic sensibilities, not people who look like Cirque du Soleil performers.

UNIT were also really helpful in visualising the whole idea and helping me to figure out in my brain the best way to film all the different elements in order to achieve the best results.

Q> This seems quite a complex project with both live action and VFX. How did you go about managing logistics, timings of the job? 

TWJ> We knew it was going to be really tight for timings from the moment the shoot was finished but we had just over a week of lead time which proved essential! Making a 3D previs was our first priority as it gave an idea of how we could set the scene for the beginning of the films.

Another previs later, with some frames from the storyboard, ended up being essential for the shoot as it helped give more of an idea of timings we needed to hit for each shot; what frame rate we should be shooting at in case we needed to speed anything up in comp and also cover off any extra clean background shots that would become useful later on.

Q> Is it beneficial to have a VFX Supervisor on set? Could you foresee any problems?

TWJ> It’s always worth having a supervisor on set and this was proof of exactly that. We needed to know what we could shoot in portrait rather than landscape, to get more resolution from the shot. The cuckoo clock had a pendulum on it, so we knew straight away this was not going to work in post. To get the most out of the composition of the first shot, we were going to have to speed it up.

There’s a huge advantage of having our offline editors who can come in and sit with a director in house alongside 2D lead to make sure we are getting the best working performances for the director.

Q> The cast are brilliant and add a lot to the spot. What was casting like? What were you looking for in your actors, and what made you go with the choices you did? 

WC> I always wanted performers who were really strong comedically and would be able to create great performances while dangling on wires up in the air. Thankfully, the agency and client were also on the same page, so the casting process was pretty easy. The hardest thing was we saw a lot of great people, so it was one of the lucky situations where we had a tough time picking because we had so many great options. The two we finally cast, were perfect though, and gave us exactly what we wanted.

Q> What did you learn from the making of this new campaign?

WC> I learned that it’s ok not to fully know how you are going to make something going into a project. That can often be really daunting, but every job is different and that’s what makes it so fun. Sometimes you have a really clear idea how you are going to do a project going in, but on this occasion, I had no idea and it was really fun working it all out with a bunch of super talented people. I also learned I really like Moju, especially the ginger one. 

Q> What challenges did you face during this project? How did you overcome them? 

TWJ> Time constraint was the main challenge, so working out the best approach for certain elements. Having access to all departments in one building helped speed up everything! Flame was so important and highly efficient in creating a fast set up to remove green screen spill from the actors. Also cleaning up any liquid spill, when they poured Moju into the shot glass whilst hanging from the wire! Using Cinema 4D in our design department to create the 3D mechanical lever proved essential in giving us total control of combining the cuckoo clock with the actors. And also for animating the beak of the cuckoo in one of the idents, with a little wink in there! 

WC> One of the challenges I had is there is only a finite amount of time that someone can be up in a wire before it starts to become painful, especially if they are not used to it. I was very conscious of this, so it was crucial everyone was fully focused between takes because there were only so many takes we could achieve before we needed to rest the actors. I just tried to make sure that I was as clear and concise with the actors as I could possibly be between takes. They were fantastic though and really gave it their all. I’m sure they were pretty knackered by the end of it!