In October I was asked to go and take stills on a TV advert set for an advert being produced for a Sony Competition, marking the launch of their new ‘Rolly’, (pictured above). Essentially it is an MP3 player with speakers that can also role around the table and open it’s speakers. Kinda cute if you like that kidna thing!

There were 5 sets spread over three days filming in London

The whole thing was shot on 16mm film. It was my first time on a set for such a long time, I tried to pick up as much as I could about what they were doing. Amazing how much skills and effort goes into producing one tiny clip of film.

Due to the fact that filming was going on, it obviously wasn’t possible to use flash for the photos, so this meant using wide open lenses at high ISO settings, ISO 800+ generally and a steady hand! This wasn’t one of the shot setups specifically, but I noticed the sillouttes through the plexiglass formed a nice graphic image

Nothing like lying on the cold concrete floor to get a smile!

Arri lighting provided a massive LED wall for the set which could display a huge range of colours, and be programmed to create a vast array of interesting lighting effects.

In the foreground of this shot you can see the tracks that the dolly runs on to get smooth zoom shots. This shot was taken on a tripod to ensure a higher apperature, and lower ISO could be used. I also used a Canon Speed Lite flash to illuninate the foreground to create a balanced exposure.

With the main fill lights off, the LED wall can be used to create some great silloutte effects

A vast amount of money was spent buying roses, to form a rose petal floor covering! As they were being laid I caught some of the floating down through the air

This was one of the other scenes that was shot, a futuristic news reader.

The 3 day shoot was a really interesting experience for me, I would love to do some more work along those lines one day. Watching the filming crew was fascinating too, and made my button press on my camera look like kids play! When the film gets produced I will try and post up a link.

For those who want to see more I have split the remaining pictures into three galleries:

• Arri lighting LED wall photos
• Behind scenes photos
• People around the set

Any who was part of the filming crew feel free to use the images, just right click on the to save them. Please link back to my site if you do though.

Their latest advert doesn’t quite live up to the previous ones in my opinion, but is still a lot of fun and just goes to show what you can do with an idea and big budget… Not quite sure what the advert is supposed to say about their new cameras though, that they are foam proof?!

This is an interesting making of video. Seven and a half minutes to make all that foam, insane! I just hope the extras got to have a foam party in it afterwards and it didn’t all go to waste.

Maybe foam machines will become the next big thing in the world of Strobist and replace the in-famous smoke machine?