The commercial opens with hot young guys vying for the attention of a beautiful girl by ‘shooting' glances at her. The epic action is set against a backdrop of a battleground soundtrack complete with gun fire, helicopters and mortar explosions that drives the visuals. The hero lead sees his dream girl, seizes the moment and navigates his way through the battlefield of dancefloor politics. He gets the girl at the end. Cut to the title ‘Chew life. Stimorol.'
For Leigh, the challenge was about how to fit in all the required detail of the script within the confines of the allocated time frame. Along with the 60 second, the story had to work within 30 seconds.
Ogilvie said: “The use of slow motion was imperative to the mood of the piece, but that chews up time, so my approach was to get into the guts of the story as succinctly and as quickly as possible. We tackled the staging of the commercial by distilling what we needed to read within each shot. Then we cheated time using both slow motion and quick impact moments, all the while still retaining the theatre of the piece. This was then masterfully edited by the awesome Saki Bergh of Left Post Productions.”
Putter praised Ogilvie's contribution during the two and a half day shoot, as well as beforehand in the extensive planning phase.
“The shoot, which took place in a club in Cape Town called Rooseveldt's, was exceptionally taxing for Leigh. Because the upstairs and downstairs sections mirrored each other, we could and did shoot two scenes at once.
“This meant Leigh was very busy but she didn't waiver once and the shoot progressed very smoothly. She has a kind of ‘youth culture' style as a result of her background as one of the most accomplished local music video directors. Her unique style shows in her lighting decisions and in her wardrobe requests; both add colour to a script without detracting from its presence.
"We could have landed up with a coy-ish boy-meets-girl ad, but we didn't because Leigh allowed her own innate sense of style to show through and didn't try to mimic or copy successful treatments she'd seen elsewhere,” he said.
