Snow, Horses, Explosions! Producer Jonny Kight’s ‘23 Highlights

C4 and Studio Lambert's reality series 'Rise and Fall' took on class commentary, and the commercial, shot with MindsEye director Matthew Walker, captured the competitive and conniving spirit of the show. The action-packed promo was shot in just two days in a manor house in South London. Jonny says that the reference for the main action sequence was a mixture of Korean cinema and the Matthew Vaughn's 'Kingsman' films. "It was fun and challenging to stage the action sequence and create something choreographed that made it feel like one big movement. Matthew wanted the final wide shot to be like a Renaissance painting come to life." 

Jonny notes that the TVC was shot on not a massive budget with three weeks of prep and a full day of rehearsal to perfectly stage all the disparate elements. The listed building proved challenging as the DOP wanted to light the set from above to avoid visible stands in the wide-angle shots. "It was tough because we weren't allowed to pre-rig the ceiling. We had to be careful and smart about positioning the lights in the end," Jonny says. A mini set was also built for the shot of the stuntman crashing through the ceiling to not damage any of the building. "We had to be really smart and utilise the space effectively." The promo picked up a gold at the Clio Awards and a silver from Promax UK.

When is a horse a bear? When the creative idea proposes to show a group of people riding bears through snowy altitudes, which falls somewhere between impossible and incredibly dangerous to accomplish in real life. That was precisely the task at hand to make the Coors' 'Fresh Ride' spots a reality. To get the visuals of the actors riding bears, the team had to rig up horses that would then be edited and replaced with the bears during post-production by Untold Studios. 

Jonny, the Untold team, director Diarmid Harrison-Murray, and almost 200 crew, actors and extras all at the mercy of the elements as they travelled between Slovenia and Austria, first searching for snow and then away from avalanche warnings. "The filming was going to take place in Slovenia, and on the recce, we found lots of snowy locations to shoot, but it was an unusually hot winter, and there was basically no snow once we got back there for the shoot. We quickly diverted the production to Austria, leaving only the final party scene to be filmed at altitude back in Slovenia," Jonny recalls. 

In Slovenia, the party scene had to be shot in the only location with snow, as it was at a high altitude. The only way to access it was via gondoliers that didn't open until 6am and could only carry four people or a piece of equipment at a time. By the time all the actors, extras, and equipment were transported to the location, we had about three hours to shoot the scene and get everyone back down safely by 6pm that evening! And we had three days of this." It's worth mentioning that this all took place at temperatures of -10°C. The chaos doesn't phase Jonny. In fact, he's rather fond of finding solutions when the situation calls for it most.

Audible’s ‘Breakdown’ spot found the comedy in tragedy, and behind the scenes, the production, led by Jonny, used the stress of the very short to deliver advertising gold. The production needed to shoot from day into night, so it’s ironic that the shoot was scheduled for the year’s longest day, maximising light well into the evening. The side of the road location was approximated by closing a part of a racetrack. “We needed to blow up a part of the car for the spot, and it nearly blew up one of the lights above and our rain machine,” he recalls. Despite the quick and ever-so-slightly unpredictable production turnaround, the Thomas Ormonde-directed spot has picked up a series of awards and proved that a lot can be achieved even in taxing conditions.