Written by new-contact on Nov 23, 2011. Posted in Production News

Hiking brand Quechua cosies up to the wilderness on location in Slovenia

French hiking equipment brand Quechua has filmed on location in Slovenia in Eastern Europe for its new commercial, We All Need Warmth. The spot is a mood piece showcasing wilderness wildlife, while campers cosy up with apparently tame animals, including prairie dogs and a bear.

Mangart, a mountain in the Julian Alps on the Italy-Slovenia border, was used as the main filming location. The locations look generic on-screen, but they doubled for the actual setting of the French Alps. The brand had filmed on Mangart for a previous campaign as they found it more film-friendly.

Some locations were so remote they could be only accessed by foot, which meant first putting the equipment onto a big trailer on a tractor, driving it for 15 minutes through woods, then driving to a more rugged part of the forest with a quad-bike.

Hana Kovic, Studio Arkadena

The Julian Alps are lower and have some of Europe’s highest paved roads, making truck access more forgiving. That’s not to say there weren’t still plenty of challenges. Hana Kovic produced the shoot for Studio Arkadena: “We needed to be ready to shoot at sunrise and access to the top of the mountain and to the lake at night [in order to prepare, was a challenge].

“Some locations were so remote they could be only accessed by foot, which meant first putting the equipment onto a big trailer on a tractor, driving it for 15 minutes through woods, then driving to a more rugged part of the forest with a quad-bike, before carrying all the equipment a further 45 minutes by hand. We needed three hours to get all the equipment to the shooting location.”

Working with animals presented challenges too, even though they were specially trained. The forest area where they were filming had to be blocked and secured from public access. Perimeter netting had to be set up and the crew checked for the smallest holes to make sure none of the animals escaped.

We used a really good wireless system for setting up the agency's video village, which meant we could set the video village really far away from the set and keep things quiet for the animals.

Hana Kovic, Studio Arkadena

On top of this, noise had to be minimised around the animals. In practical terms this meant running all the equipment from battery packs and setting up a small back-up generator some 300 metres from the set.

Kovic added: “We used a really good wireless system for setting up the agency's video village, which meant we could set the video village really far away from the set. Because of their ease of use, we used the lighting balloons Airstar and set them up every 300 metres all across the forest for the crew to be able to see while they were transporting all the equipment for three hours in otherwise complete darkness.”

Mangart is inside Slovenia’s Triglav National Park and as with any such environment the production made sure it left the location untouched once it wrapped.

Credits
Client: Quechua
Agency: Fred & Farid, Paris
Production Company: Irene, Paris
Production Service Company: Studio Arkadena, Slovenia
Line Producer: Dejan Rotovnik
Director of Photography: Yves Cape
Directors: Herve de Crecy, Francois Alaux