Turning Bambi’s McDonald’s Dream into a Cinematic Reality
The newest campaign for McDonald’s Poland, in collaboration with DDB Warsaw, features the iconic Polish rapper Bambi and her custom McDonald’s set. Since its launch earlier this month, the set has taken off, selling out due to its immense popularity. To bring this vibrant vision to life, DOBRO teamed up with Tom Brown. In this interview, Tom dives into his experience on set and reveals one of the campaign's key success factors - the DOBRO way.
Coming from a post-production and animation background, Tom has garnered a reputation for getting dynamic ideas and killer effects work into small and big screen content.
In the last two years, Tom has created award-winning work for brands such as Adidas, Samsung, Nike, Volvic, Captain Morgan’s, Mobil, Natwest and Pokerstars as well as working alongside stars such as Pep Guardiola, Chelsea FC, Max Verstappen and even Big Narstie.
With 10 years of VFX experience and having worked on everything from the BBC’s Horrible Histories to holograms for the West End stage, Tom brings a wealth of knowledge that allows him to create unique, vibrant and impactful work with his own signature style.
Q> What is the creative concept of this campaign?
Tom> We wanted to make an advert that felt like Bambi fully took over McDonald's, and they were facilitating her in creating anything she could think of and McDonald's would make it happen instantaneously. So, whether that be sliding into a volcano documentary or falling through the roof on a cooking show, everything she wanted to do, everything she can think of at the speed she thinks of it. McDonald's is there to fix out.
Q> What are your thoughts on working with DOBRO and DDB Poland?
Tom> It has been good. I work in Poland quite a lot, but I've never worked on a Polish production, so this is my first time working in the language. My biggest concern on this project was communicating the complex concepts and ideas in a language that I don't speak - but that's where DOBRO stepped in to literally and metaphorically bridge the gaps and make it all happen. And what's been really helpful, is to have the guys be able to adjust to how I want certain parts to sound like in English. And it kind of clicks. It's finding the sort of synergies between how I want the performance to work and how it needs to be delivered in Polish with that cultural understanding as well. So for me, it's been very helpful to have, dual linguists on the ground to help me get those shots.
Through numerous set visits and meetings with agency and creative, the DOBRO team were able to fully realise all the conceptual hurdles that this idea presented (volcanic landscapes, rooftop drone shots, fish eye, video game graphic and phantom slomo ) and come up with solutions that not only, let us execute everything within our schedule and budget BUT most importantly - communicate how the creative vision would 'evolve' so that to our client had confidence in every part of the process.
To give examples - on our very first visit to the rooftop where we planned to shoot the music video scene, production had already organised a drone op so that we could create a rough draft of the shot and test all alternate angles and actions. This shot was then dropped in the PPM deck giving the client a concrete idea of how this shot would look days before the actual shoot. Likewise with the Volcanic rock scene - we visited the studio where we planned to build the set and production were able to take reference photos that were used in tandem with concept renders, to create the look of the scene both, as a reference for post and as an excellent visual placeholder for client side.
I was blown away by this detail oriented process of pre-production and I will definitely try to emulate this DOBRO method in future projects.
Q> You have been working in Poland for some time now but it’s the first time you’re working on a Polish production, how do you find it?
Tom> I think that, the main difference in working in Poland as opposed to working anywhere else in the world is: you have probably some of the highest trained crews in the world, obviously because of the film school, you know, you kick out exceptionally good crews. I think for me it's sometimes a lot quicker to get ideas from in here (head) onto the screen. So I’d go to Kajetan, or any of the guys and tell them what I'm thinking of. If I want to kind of do something like this and, 10 seconds later it's done. Whereas sometimes it's a bit more of a process in other countries. But yeah, it's just thanks to very, very, very, highly trained crews here.
The other thing is: there's a very real sense of camaraderie. Polish crews tend to know each other. I even recognize from working in Poland before. Often I recognize that I've worked with this or that guy before, so it feels a lot more familial and that instantly creates a shorthand. Everything's faster because of that as well.
Q> How do you find Poland itself? Did you get any chance to draw creative inspiration from the scenery here?
Tom> Most of the most of the time when I work here, I go from the hotel to a warehouse and then back to the hotel. But this time I've managed to walk around Warsaw a little bit, which has extremely beautiful scenery. The communist… that building of the Arts and Culture, I've had a chance to walk around a little bit, but I’d love a chance to see the country as a whole and explore a bit more, unfortunately, work - duty calls, and we tend to be on the roofs of McDonald's, at this current point in time.
Q> What are your plans for the future? Do you plan to work more with Polish crews and creative teams?
Tom> If I could work here all the time, I would. I think what I really like about it is the fact that, like, obviously crews are fantastic, you got loads of really great DPs, I’d love to work with. I worked with the guy who was the DP on 1670 - The Netflix thing, worked with Kajetan before. There's lots of incredible skill here and really good backup from companies like that. It would be great for me to be able to work here but we gotta win the jobs first.
