This ad approached the challenging issue of raising awareness about fostering by personifying a literal mop. You could argue that this solution was a challenge in itself, because getting an audience to feel an emotional connection for something like a mop takes a lot of planning, careful direction, and a wardrobe full of mop-sized outfits.

A lot of care and consideration went into this film in order to do the concept and the message justice. If the pacing was off, for example, the audience would lose sense of this mop growing up. If the score made the film feel too comedic, you’d undermine the weight of what it means to foster a child. If the camera didn’t treat the mop like a real person, the whole film would feel like you were following crazy mop-obsessives. I mean, you kind of are, but you wouldn’t empathise with them as much…

In short, this was quite a balancing act in many ways, but Theo and I are well accustomed to balancing. I once saw Theo stand on one leg for 14 hours straight.

One of a three part video campaign for Starburst to place their brand tag of “Unexplainably Juicy” in the school environment for Back To School. The brand is famous for its surreal adverts, so of course we had to keep that trend going…

Juicy Problem was, suitably, the most problematic to create - and I’m phrasing it that way mainly for the pun. Essentially, this shoot required a lot of different special effects set-ups to create that escalating torrent of bright purple pee, which meant a pretty long testing process in pre-production. It also meant a whole lot of fine tuning to get that pee build just right in the edit, finding the balance between helping the audience empathise with a man in distress and also laughing at the, you know, the whole pee thing.

Here’s a fun fact - There was actually a fourth video in this trilogy… Kind of. Juicy Problem was once actually about someone who - and stick with me here - sprayed juice from their nipples like an animal defence mechanism. That storyline didn’t see the light of the day, but the rig to make it happen was fully built. A video of Ian testing it will be on our Instagram page soon.

Ian apologises in advance.

One of a three part video campaign for Starburst to place their brand tag of “Unexplainably Juicy” in the school environment for Back To School. The brand is famous for its surreal adverts, so of course we had to keep that trend going…

This was by far the messiest of the three to shoot, as you’ll see in the behind the scenes photos if you follow us on Instagram for long enough. At least 50 litres of green juice was used in the making of this film, made up of - would you believe it - milk, water, and soap dye. That, along with a hefty dose of green body paint and a lot of tubes to pump that milk recipe brought the story of a lost teacher overcome by unexplainable juice to life.

That, my friends, is a sentence I never thought I’d write.

One of a three part video campaign for Starburst to place their brand tag of “Unexplainably Juicy” in the school environment for Back To School. The brand is famous for its surreal adverts, so of course we had to keep that trend going…

A key element for this video was creating real tension in the build up to the juice explosion. We knew from the start that they wanted to treat the ‘Unexplainably Juicy’ tagline as the most memorable part of the video, so in order to make that land the audience had to feel the same confusion and anticipation as the student. As soon as that paper ball hits the teacher, you know something is about to go down. Then it builds, and builds, and builds, until a strange chorus of monks sing underneath that angry gaze, and… punchline.

Insider secret: we used a paddling pool to catch all the juice. We did not paddle in that pool afterwards.

This was an excellent opportunity to do some good, spreading cautionary tales about social media use among BA staff. For a long time Theo and I have known that, while social media can be great (and terrible, but mostly great) it has a dark side - even if that dark side expresses itself through a series of unlikely but totally true events…

As a more dry backstory, this video was shown to the entirety of BA staff as an opener to a large seminar. It had to be engaging and, most importantly, make people care about a topic like responsible social media use. This tone shaped every directorial decision made, from soundtrack, to outfits, to the (actual real life BA office) locations. And, of course, there was a bit of luck in finding and casting the absolute most perfect Rupert that Theo or I could have asked for.