Thoughts on directing the new Hippo.co.za TVCs

It took me way out of my comfort zone, and should have been intimidating... but was it?

The MetropolitanRepublic team had developed ideas around the central campaign theme of "Comparison don'ts" vs "Comparison do's", and came up with a series of humorous, entertaining scenarios, demonstrating what NOT to do in a comparison situation.

When I saw the scripts for the first time I was intimidated - it was humour, and if it went south, would becoming unfunny and non-believable. I would be dead in the water as a director. With my many years of producing experience, I knew good performance was pivotal to the project and that the success of the campaign hinged on believability - that became my main focus. I also knew I had to surround myself with the best possible team for the job so we assembled a solid, experienced crew that could work under pressure.

From three scripts to four

Click on the image to view all four TVCs

The MetropolitanRepublic team had narrowed the draft scripts down to seven good possibilities, of which we would shoot three. My suggestion to them and to our clients - Derek Wilson and Daniel Jardim - was that we should cast all seven scripts, then do a rough timing edit on them, as this would quickly deliver the strengths and weaknesses of all the stories, as well as give us a feel for appropriate actors. This turned out to be a crucial decision and instead of three, four scripts went into production. We did a further call back session for the potential actors on the chosen four scripts, workshopping the different roles to make our final choice. By the final pre-production meeting, we knew who all our actors were, as well as their strengths and comfort zones and, having worked with them from the very start, I knew exactly what the deliveries should be to maximise performance in the allocated seconds.

Having done all our homework on the actors, accompanied by comprehensive and detailed pre-production, it freed up time on the filming days for crafting the lighting and art direction as well, keeping it as real as possible but pretty, and still allowing us to shoot two spots a day.

You've got to love this business - its people, possibilities, pushing envelopes, inspiration and consistency!

What's there not to love? To date, the TTL campaign has delivered record conversion rates for Hippo.co.za.

Watch the four 'comparison don'ts' TV ads on the Hippo website.