Behind the scenes of a Gruen Pitch
To give a little real-world context — a 42-second ad like the one we’ve produced here would typically take months and a sizable budget to achieve. So, with only four weeks and a few grand to burn (plus, you know… actual client work rightly taking precedence over our time), I share with you a behind-the-scenes look into the glorious, organised chaos that brought our pro-Halloween pitch to Gruen’s 750,000 viewers.
Week 1: Ideation
As soon as the brief hit our inbox, we set about unpacking Halloween’s historical and cultural contexts to pinpoint exactly how it is uniquely relevant, useful, and meaningful (as opposed to any other festivity) for all Australians. Equally, we sought to understand the crux of why so many Australians feel that Halloween is exactly the opposite of this.
We established early on that (despite the brief) our target audience wasn’t actually all Australians. The kids were already on board by default — it would just be the adults who’d need convincing. This became the premise in which all of our insights and ideas would be grounded.
We got together as a team, laughed a little too much at our own jokes, and wrote everything down. Then, to validate and expand upon our thinking we split our broader Synergy family into two feisty debate teams — those who love Halloween, and those who were wrong.
This led us to identify our key insights — being three simple and ubiquitous human truths that could be leveraged to send Halloween into the hearts and minds of Australians — and thus form the basis for how we would strategically measure the effectiveness of our ideas and translate them into persuasive scripts.
Week 2: Scriptwriting
With variables spanning interactions, cast, location, props, timing, tone, sound, art direction, and medium — the possible directions for scriptwriting were countless. Naturally, we ended up writing quite a few. Some were made us chuckle, while others moved us. Ideas were cut, reintroduced, combined and massaged until we had three strong insight-driven scripts that we felt nailed the brief — being, The Purge, Hallos, and Labels.
Each week, I watch the Gruen Pitch and wonder what other brilliant ideas the agencies might have put forward. So in the spirit of sharing and in the hope of inspiring a movement amongst our fellow Gruen pitchers, here are the three we submitted.
Scripts 1: Adulting is hard
The insight and conceptual framework: Halloween is the perfect holiday antidote to life’s problems – and we all need the perfect pressure release valve to let our hair down in a good bit of harmless fun where the rules are just that little bit more relaxed. Read it here.
Script 2: Hallos
The insight and conceptual framework: Halloween is seen as an American celebration devoid of anything of meaning for us as a nation — or is that really the case? When you look closer… it’s more Australian than you think. Read it here.
Script 3: Labels
The insight and conceptual framework: Every day we are faced with the constant pressures of an identity being forced on us. Halloween gives us the chance to reclaim this identity by choosing the masks we wear — not the masks we are forced to wear. Read it here.
As always, there were a number of much-loved and often hilarious ideas that were cut in favour of producing the strongest possible ad. A couple of personal favorites include a real spider scampering across fake webs (proving Aussies don’t even need to decorate), and a zombie casually dipping his sausage roll into the tomato sauce another man has just spilled on his already fake blood-covered shirt.
Week 3: Production
A couple of days after submitting our scripts, news came in that Gruen’s Host/Producer Wil Anderson had chosen our Hallos script to go ahead. High fives and a mammoth production effort ensued.
We immediately identified the sacrificial house for our ‘Hallos’ party and went on location to film a low-fidelity prototype. This allowed us to understand the set, time the beats of every interaction, mitigate lighting inconsistencies across the narrative, map out and escalate the presence of the props and cast, and design the end frame composition ahead of the final filming.
Parallel to this, we sourced props and expanded the script to include copious amounts of detail — creating an immensely layered effect on-set that would intrinsically link Halloween to Australian culture. Many of these details would go unnoticed by viewers but accumulate into a subconscious feeling that Halloween in Australia is undeniably familiar, relatable, and easy. From our 8pm BBQs in broad daylight, fondness of pranks, fear of swooping magpies and redback spiders, to iconic Aussie get-together brands (such as VB, Timtams, Shapes and Favourites), and Aussie heroes/villains (such as Ned Kelly, Steve Irwin, a Cricketer, and a VB beer wizard) — every element was placed and nuanced throughout to convey the feeling that Australians have always embraced Halloween.
But of course, none of this could have been achieved without our broader Synergy family, many of whom happily volunteered their Sunday and most of our big-note costumes (such as the inflatable pumpkin, two inflatable dinosaurs, and the fluffy pink gorilla). We were also blessed to have an uncanny Ned Kelly lookalike wandering about the office just as we were pondering who to cast.
So, after just one week of planning, our team and cast came together to film. With beautiful weather, we set up and filmed over an 11 hour day — consisting of 5 separate scenes and camera set-ups, each of which took up to 20 takes before capturing the ideal interaction of elements and timing. This was an enormous expectation of patience for our much younger, sugar-loaded cast and their parents who were charged with wrangling them.
Somewhat ironically, our ‘everyman’ narrator (for Canberrans, yes, that is our beloved ‘Magnet Mart guy’), was dressed without any costume whatsoever. Why? Because you don’t necessarily need to don a scary costume to get in on the festivities. Hair and make-up were also intentionally downplayed across most of our cast to echo the easy and realistic feel of the narrative.
To close out the day we recorded the sound of BBQ chatter, which would later be added to the sound mix and dubbed over our lip-syncing Halloween party-goers.
We got most things right on the day… but, there was one blooper. (best with sound on)
Disclaimer: No dinosaurs we harmed in the making of our ad. Well, ok… maybe one. She was ok though.
Week 4: Post-production
After filming, our talented production team cut the scenes together into a single continuous narrative, graded the colour, designed/mixed the sound bed, and animated elements throughout.
… which brings us to the magpie.
We’ve been happily spreading the rumour that we taped bread to our narrator’s head and sent him down a notorious magpie street hoping for the best… but in reality, it’s actually a CGI animation that’s been painstakingly crafted from scratch specifically for this moment. It took hours and hours to build, texture, light and animate; not to mention the time ‘researching’ (read: laughing) at videos of magpies chasing poor cyclists — all of which culminated into a realistic, much-loved, magpie swoop designed to catch our viewers off guard. This, alongside the exploding beer spray, has been so expertly animated that many people have thought them to be real.
After four intense but brilliant weeks, we sent our ad to Gruen’s Pitch producer.
Week 5: On set
Pumped, we flew up to ABC’s Sydney studio where I would present our team’s hard work on The Pitch stage.
After being joined by Gruen’s producer, I was taken through to meet my co-presenter Sarah Cook, who hails from our opposing (yet very delightful and talented) agency HeadJam. After a quick on-stage rehearsal with Wil, we popped into hair and make-up before watching the filming from backstage in the greenroom.
The Pitch segment ran and panelists Todd Sampson, Carolyn Miller, Karen Ferry, and Russel Howcroft voted. While we didn’t take home the trophy this year, we had such a brilliant time that we wouldn’t change a thing. #SquadGhouls
“I just want to say that the production values… were just absolutely fantastic. Fantastic storytelling, single camera shot, lots of great casting, beautifully timed.” – Russel Howcroft
“… shortening it [to Hallos] was brilliant.” Carolyn Miller
You can also watch the full pitch segment here on ABC IView.
Credits
Directors: Jason Perelson & Erin Collett
Cinematographer: Tobias Ridewood
Script: Jason Perelson, Erin Collett & Murray Barton
Grip: John Waterhouse
Editor & Animator: Liam Newton (Nimic Productions)
Sound Design & Mix: Michael Brogan (Nimic Productions)
Producer: Murray Barton
Graphic Designers: Erin Collett & Cameron Porombka
Set Design: Jason Perelson, Erin Collett, & Murray Barton
Makeup: Corinne Steele
Production Assistants: Ashley Parker, Mathew Ong & James Robertson
Runner: Kiera Kruttschnitt
Our 100% Synergy team and families cast of 38, including: Brendan Sloane, Patrick Quade, Hannah Dehelean, Anthony Radik, Suzy Kuo, Holly Dorsett, Angeline Shakespeare, James Ikuuro, Pritesh Contractor, Zoe Pleasants, David Berkelmans, Darcy McLeod, Martin Harris, Corinne Steele, Cameron Porombka, Sharon Poole, Mark Stoya, Amanda Irvine, and more
BTS Photography: Jessica Harris
Other creatively awesome contributors: Carmen Lorkin, Samantha Clark, Rachel Coggan, Suzy Kuo, Nick Johnson
Bonus shout out: To our new friends over at HeadJam for their top-notch ad and backstage company, and the CJZ Productions team for bringing Gruen to our screens