Fun Bolthouse campaign reminds us to take a break and embrace the farm

Beverage company, Bolthouse Farms, launches a series of commercials created by The Many, with Chimney completing full-service production and post production. 

Directed by Chimney’s Sam O’Hare, the four 10-second films promote Bolthouse’s range of premium beverages and were developed around the idea that as modern life becomes busier, the concept of nature and farms become more appealing. The cheerful films encourage people to take a break from their busy routines to enjoy a taste of the farm in Bolthouse’s travel-sized bottle. This break from reality manifests itself as the farm literally growing out of everyday locations: carrots sprout from living room floors, office lamps transform into apple trees, dumbbells in the gym become fresh milk cans, and strawberries make a surprise appearance on the subway platform.

Chimney completed full-service production and post on the films. Working collaboratively with the creative team at The Many, Sam O'Hare directed the live-action portions and also led Chimney’s VFX team in NYC. 

Sam comments: “Having a unified creative vision throughout the process really helped ensure consistency and efficiencies from start to finish. From the start we knew that CGI would be the best approach to bring these spots to life - obviously a strawberry plant can't grow out of a subway bench and a desk lamp can't turn into an apple tree. When a campaign relies so heavily on executing the key elements in post, we utilize previz to help us imagine the end product while planning the production and shot list. This ensures that the footage captured on set marries happily with the CG that is needed to bring it all together, and allows the agency and client to see the vision and sign off before shooting, greatly streamlining the shoot. The fact that these were 10 second vignettes also made the decision to do previz that much easier to make sure we left enough time for all the elements to animate on screen without feeling rushed.”

Commenting on the tight turnaround, Sam says: “Photo-real CGI - especially this close up - requires a lot of time and detail to make look right. This is where being Chimney and having the global network really came in handy as we were able to pull in talent from multiple offices to make sure the work was executed beautifully while still meeting the hard deadline. While I directed and led the post in NY, Chimney’s VFX supervisor Petter Lindholm in the LA office was able to be on set to supervise to make sure the VFX data was captured and that everything that was shot would translate smoothly to the post workflow. We also partnered with our office in Gothenburg so we could have dedicated teams on each vignette making sure everything came together.”