Tiptree

01 The brief

Context & commission

Wilkin & Sons had been making jam in Tiptree, Essex since 1885. Their products were stocked in first class cabins and five star hotels. Their brand had the heritage and the quality to back it up. What they didn't have was a television campaign — at least not in a generation.

MVad brought us in to direct. The brief was to make something that looked expensive, felt premium and showed the product in the kind of settings it actually belonged in. First class travel. Luxury hotels. The sort of environments where you'd expect to find a small pot of Little Scarlet on the breakfast tray without thinking twice about it.

02 What we did

The production

Two days. Four locations. Seven setups. A cast and crew of fifteen including art department, wardrobe and HMU — sourced with serious attention to detail, including contributions from Gresham Blake, Heals and Karen Mabon among others. We shot in REDcode RAW with Cooke S2/3 lenses — the combination gave us the latitude for the bright sun-drenched scenes and a warmth in the image that suited the brand.

We cast a family of actors who'd worked together before, which bought us time on set that a cold cast never would have. And we needed every second — four locations in two days with the light running out on the second afternoon is not when you want to be reaching deep for a performance from a seven year old.

One of the locations was Heathrow. We'd applied for permission weeks in advance. The day before the shoot, the airport confirmed it would be fine but that someone needed to accompany us — and that there would be a fee, payable in advance. Despite chasing, we never heard from them again. On the morning of the shoot, we loaded a small unit into a van — DOP, gimbal op, AC, one talent — drove to Heathrow, walked in, introduced ourselves to the staff at the gate, said we were filming, and filmed. Nobody stopped us. The invoice never came either.

Music was the last piece of the puzzle. MVad had landed on a cover of I'm Into Something Good by The Bird and the Bee — the right tempo, the right warmth, exactly what the edit needed. With the clock running out before broadcast cutoff we couldn't reach their management in Los Angeles. Their PA checked her notes and told us they were at a conference. In the UK, as it happened. In Brighton. About five minutes from our edit suite. We cleared the sync, paying considerably for the privilege, and got it to air.

03 The result

On screen, on budget, on air

The spot was well received — particularly the music, which had been the last thing anyone agreed on. For a budget that would barely register on a London production company's rate card, it looked like considerably more. That was the intention from the start: put every penny on screen.

It was the first television campaign we directed. In some ways it set an unhelpful precedent — fifteen crew, proper art department, locations that required a certain amount of creative problem solving. Not every client since has had the appetite for that level of ambition. But some have. And for those, the approach is the same: work out what the budget can do and make sure the screen shows all of it.