'Our client loved the film,' Says Producer Laszlo Bederna from Saatchi & Saatchi (London), 'and it seems that the consumers have been noticing it as well. We don't have the results of summer sales yet but we do know that shipments are up so it could only be good!'
'This was a truly international job.' Adds Laszlo, 'The client, Procter & Gamble, is based in Geneva, the Agency, Saatchi & Saatchi is based in London and Dubai and we did our casting in Warsaw, Lebanon, London, Prague and Istanbul!'
'The team produced two separate ads back to back, one was designed for use in Central and Eastern Europe and one was created for the Middle East Regions. For the Arabic version one of the top Turkish models and actors, Chegiz Coskun, was asked to play the hero role, whilst MOT's Freddie was selected for the Central and Eastern European version.'
'The teams involved with making the ad were Tango Productions, an international hair-advertising specialist crew based in Warsaw, and post-production was provided by GYAR in Budapest' adds Laszlo.
'Our aim was to produce a mini drama of emotions revolving around the refreshing qualities of Head & Shoulders. This core Agency creative idea had to translate well into dozens of languages across Europe and the Middle East, as there were only two 30 sec commercials produced to cover all these markets.'
'The story that we wanted to convey in the ad focuses upon the individual characters, and capturing their facial expressions. This gave us an especially difficult brief for the casting. We were not just looking for the perfect characters, visually, but also a pair who could believably act out a story of complex emotions without using many words. Of course they also had to have the most amazing head of hair for the job too! '
'We looked at about 150 couples and after 4 recall sessions the Director Devon Dickson suggested that we select Freddie and Eva from two separate sessions. This was a brave decision made by the Creatives Tina Lilly, Carma Andraos from SSA Dubai as neither Freddie or Eva had done a commercial before, let alone a hair ad, and both had very limited acting experience. However we knew that we could make it work as a team, and I felt especially confident with the Director Devon at the helm driving it ahead. In the years that I have worked with Devon I have come to regard him as one of the best in Hair and Beauty, and he has also worked with a lot of actors in the past, so he was an ideal man for this job.'
'I attended both of the shoots which took place over a total of 4 intensive days.' Adds Laszlo, 'Hair Stylist Giuseppe Lorusso from Milan was on hand to give the models just the right looks that we needed, and in order to get some of the extreme close ups of the models emotions, some of the scenes were shot as many as 40 times! The long shower sequence featuring Freddie was the most important as the product story is about 'staying cool' no matter what happens and this had to be visualized through Freddie's facial expressions as he washes his hair with Head & Shoulders. Freddie was a star and spent a total of 3 hours in the shower with foam running over his head!'
'Towards the end of shooting the ad we also had a little fun and decided to shoot an alternate end version!' Adds Laszlo.'We had our girl chase her guy with her muddy hands in the style of the old 'Benny Hill' TV series and tackle him to the bed laughing!'
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