Written by new-contact on Nov 3, 2011. Posted in Production News

Johnnie Walker awakens ‘the Giant’ filming on location in Rio de Janeiro

Scotch whiskey brand Johnnie Walker has launched its first Brazilian advertising campaign with a spot filmed in Rio de Janeiro. Keep Walking Brazil shows the city’s famous Pão de Açúcar mountain (also known as The Sugar Loaf) rising into the figure of a giant, as the city watches in wonder.

The production team spent about a week filming across Rio, capturing the reaction shots of the people as they watch the mountain come to life. One of the main challenges was to make sure the mountain itself appeared in the background of most of the shots, regardless of where in the city they were.

Anna Hashmi produced for Gorgeous: “The script is based on the legend of the sleeping giant that lies under the Sugar Loaf mountain in Rio de Janerio and also explores the idea of Brazil’s economic moniker as the sleeping giant. We shot on location around Rio, but most of the locations were around the best vantage points of the Sugar Loaf mountain from Botafogo, Orca, Copacabana and downtown.”

The script is based on the legend of the sleeping giant that lies under the Sugar Loaf mountain in Rio de Janerio and also explores the idea of Brazil’s economic moniker as the sleeping giant.

Anna Hashmi, Gorgeous

Leandro Medeiros is Marketing Director for Diageo: “The challenge was more into the casting and mood of the Rio locations, having to describe the ‘whole country’ in terms of ethnicity and vicinity, and have enough material to be able to portrait subtle and diverse reactions to an event of this magnitude.”

Help came from the Rio Film Commission and the production team had to make sure all their paperwork and permits were in order to ensure a smooth shoot in such a busy city. Hashmi added: “We had so many locations and unit moves that we had to carefully time to avoid the heavy traffic in Copacabana and Botafogo.”

With the ‘Giant’ figure being a digital creation, the project properly came together in post-production. Rio production company Zohar Cinema describes the project as essentially a three-way effort between NeoGama, Gorgeous and The Mill.

The challenge was to make all this work. Carlos Paiva is Managing Director at Zohar Cinema: “People in three different time zones, between Europe (Peter and Anna of Gorgeous), New York (The Mill), São Paulo (NeoGama BBH) and Rio (Zohar) had to gather once or twice a week in long post-production meetings where each and every detail was scrutinised with passion from the movement, the texture and even the face of our 'Giant'. It was a very long road with a lot of people involved to get to this amazing product.”

Credits
Client: Johnnie Walker (Diageo)
Agency: NeoGama BBH, São Paulo
Agency President: Alexandre Gama
Production Companies: Gorgeous, Zohar Cinema
Producers: Isabelle Tanugi, Anna Hashmi
Location Manager: Marcelo Ribeiro
Director of Photography: Joost van Gelder
Director: Peter Thwaites

Stills images courtesy of Rachel Tanugi Ribas.