COMMERCIAL: Pepsi Next parodies Coke Chase

CharlesPapert

CharlesPapert

Director of Photography
Pepsi wanted to poke fun at Coke's Superbowl "Coke Chase" campaign with this web ad. It was seven days from the treatment arriving to delivering to the client.

I shot on the Alexa with Master Primes, from 16 to 100mm, also with the Alura 15.5 to 45, at ProRes422HQ.

Pepsi

Here's the teaser for the Coke campaign that this parodies:

Coke Chase 2013 Ad - YouTube
 
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Apparently it nearly made it to the Superbowl broadcast but there wasn't enough lead time for CBS to be able to approve it. Ah well!

Note appearance of "American Reunion"'s Ali Cobrin...
 
Had a couple of PM's regarding lighting on this so I'll answer publicly.

The opening shot that directly parodies the Coke ad was the last thing we shot and the only composite in the piece. Keyed with an blonde through an opal frame then through an 8x8 light silk, plus a 12x12 sky blue fabric butterfly lit with another couple of blondes (to give an overhead sky fill with blue kicks in the leather and helmet for realism--much of that was timed out in the composite). A bare 5K created the backlight heat. Much of this setup except the front fill is visible in the "behind the scenes" shot that follows. Six space lights washed the blue screen and provided a background visual for later in the spot. I had them knocked way down once they got on camera vs shooting the actual composite shot.

Once we arrive at the Pepsi machine, I had three 4x4 Kinos with 1/2 CTB rigged next to each other hung on pipe as backlights motivated by the Pepsi machine. The side key was the 8x8 silk, giving a neutral tungsten feel motivated from the "hot" end of the stage. On some shots looking towards the machine I added a tweenie to give a harder side edge (darker outfits for instance). The machine itself contained two 5' cool white fluorescent tubes, which we partially corrected with 1/2 CTO and N3 to bring the exposure where needed for camera, plus we used a strip of daylight Literibbon behind the vertical row of buttons to give it a backlight. Amazing tool that Literibbon--being all but flat, it squished nicely between the buttons and the metal guard behind it and we had full dimmer control to get it right for camera. Quick and easy!

Incidentally, my base exposure was T2.8/4 with the Alexa at 800, which allowed me to use the T2.8 Alura lightweight zoom when needed, but with the Master Primes I knocked the ISO back to 200 and shot at a T1.4/2 as the director wanted to keep it shallow. Once we went longer than 50mm, I would ease that back to a T2/2.8 at 400 to give the AC a chance. The nice thing about dropping the ISO on the Alexa is that you shift the dynamic range towards the shadow side, which gives a bit more low end latitude.

To get the shots through the delivery slot of the machine, we simply opened the door and rotated the guts of the machine out of the way. With the translucent logo panel now exposed, we simply blasted a 1/4 blued Source Four into the backside of the artwork and allowed the machine to actually light the actors--it matched nicely!

When we turn fully around shooting back into the faces, I knocked down the level of the top Kino's and augmented it with a Zylight IS3 pushed flat up against the machine that continued the sense of light from the machine. A 6x12 bleached mus hung from the grid about 10 feet back from the actors (hit with three Source 4's) gave me a subtle and soft back edge. A few Juniors hung off the grid in the background aimed at the camera provided some heat and interest. A couple of tweenies hung straight down from the grid created scallops on the back wall, and we sprinkled some dimmed down 40's (stage lights) and practicals around for further highlights.

Looking towards the Coke machine, a tweenie off the right edge of frame amplifies the backlight effect of the 40 practical seen in the shot. We put full CTO on the tubes inside the Coke machine to make it a bit more yellow/dingy looking, and I reduced the level on the 8x8 key to keep the foreground from getting too hot.

Looking towards the blue screen stage, the 8x8 became two 4x4 muslin floppies flat against the wall with a 1K open pushed into each. I added a little bit of fill from the camera side to help the actors when they look towards the PA by the Coke machine--this was a bounce into 4x8 foamcore with a light gridcloth in front of it--very diffuse.

That's pretty much it. Despite it being an official Pepsi spot, it was made for their web division and thus the budget was relatively humble--we had just enough tools and personnel to get the job done but it all worked out!
 
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