Ads with colour commentary where I mostly talk about what books, movies and shows influenced the work.
ALDI / ALDI Quality
Yes naysayers, you can get quality at an ALDI price.
Colour Commentary:
“The reference for this spot was the famous Ides of March scene from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. There was something entertaining about treating a warning about ALDI salami with the same gravity as a warning about a conspiracy to murder. All we had to do was switch out a soothsayer for a naysayer, and then imagine this character in the context of a regular family lunch. Usually in an ad you need a great introduction to a scenario, I guess it’s called a hook? In this case, it was hearing the shrill ‘bewwwarrreee’ moments before the naysayer character enters the room. The wardrobe change gag at the end was Harold Einstein’s idea, and a great example the thirst beat of a joke which actually lands the entire point of the ad.”
ALDI / ALDI Prices
ALDI prices is the soothing balm to your shopping aisle anxieties.
Colour Commentary:
“There’s a lot of comedy in taking something as everyday and pedestrian as the price of cheese and then treating it with the extreme weight of the most existential questions of human existence. The original reference for this ad was that Good Will Hunting scene where Robin Williams forces a therapy breakthrough with Matt Damon by saying ‘It’s not your fault’ over and over again. I’d say the spirit of that scene is still here somewhere if you look hard enough. Andreas Nilsson gave these spots the ineffable quality with the blocking of the characters and inspiration from the Silent Song scene from Songs from the Second Floor.”
Tooheys Extra Dry /
Proudly Ordinary
A beer that wears ordinary as a badge of honour.
Colour Commentary:
“Making a beer ‘cool again’ might sound like a great creative brief to some. But to me it sounded like an absolute nightmare, especially considering the beer had, at this point, become the butt of every joke for younger beer drinkers. In retrospect, leaning into the joke like we ended up doing feels like an obvious solution, but in practice, it was difficult and stressful. Are we taking this too far? What if it backfires? Will young people sniff out this attempt to get them onside and pour the beer out on the side of the Harbour Bridge in protest? There were so many daunting questions. But thankfully, none of these things actually happened because people ended up liking it. Plus! I got to work with Jarrad Wright.”
ALDI / More Range Than You Thought
You didn’t know ALDI had all that, did you?
Colour Commentary:
“We’ve all been there. You let someone go in front of you in the supermarket queue because it looks like they’ve only got a couple of items, and then it turns out they’ve bought the entire store. This truth felt like it could only be brought to life by referencing the great bottomless Mary Poppins’ bag. Somehow this simple idea ended up being complicated to produce, mostly because Hamish Rothwell wanted to do it all in camera (which we resoundingly agreed with), so all this stuff literally had to come out of the ALDI bag itself. When it came to shoot night, we only had time for two takes of that giant inflatable waterpark emerging from the bag. But once it reaches two in the morning on set everyone’s too tired to be stressed about that kind of thing.”
BWS /
On My Way
A little help for that mate who’s always late.
Colour Commentary:
“BWS’s grab-and-go service enables the behaviour of some of your most infuriating friends, the ones who are inexplicably always late. Once we knew the muse of this project, the tricky part was figuring out a way to bring this type of person to life in a likeable way, because as we all know, being compulsively late isn’t just a selfish trait, it’s a corrosive disease of the mind and soul. Luckily, we got Stefan Hunt on board to direct this, because he’s a very likeable person who makes very likeable things. He also managed to do something here that I previously thought was impossible: make something COOL and FUNNY at the same time.”
YouTube /
Goldi’s Locks
A fairy tale fit for short form advertising.
Colour Commentary:
“It’s probably good that I have a commentary section on this website now because this project always takes a little explaining. To get the word out about short-form advertising on YouTube, they wanted us to reimagine a classic fairy tale. So, our idea was to create an imaginary business for Father Bear called ‘Goldi’s Locks’: a full service security system to keep little blond girls out of your house (and porridge). We shot this for 600 dollars in our producers family home and I still love it because it’s so silly and stupid. Originally we had all these ideas for the security system, but we were broke so we just used a simple padlock for everything, which ended up being a better joke anyway.”
Australian Government / The Algorithm of Disrespect
Experiencing the hidden world of disrespect influencing by young people.
Colour Commentary:
“It’s almost impossible to parent effectively in the modern internet era. Historically, parents have lived in the same world of experience as their kids, but now, thanks to technology, they’re not even inhabiting the same universe. The Algorithm of Disrespect is a digital simulation that gives parents a window into the world of disrespect influencing their kids, because there’s no other way for them to see and understand it. And believe me, if there was an easier idea to make that solved this same problem, I would’ve gladly proposed it. Because building wireframes, recreating real disrespectful content and getting this project through government research was one of the hardest things I’ve experienced so far in this job.”
Australian Government / Consent Can’t Wait
We can’t wait to answer our questions about consent.
Colour Commentary:
“I like this film idea for two reasons. The first is it’s simple. We open people starting far away from each other about to engage in an intimate moment, then they get closer and closer to each other, while we hear all different kinds of people speaking their unanswered questions about consent, cutting at the very moment they’re about to kiss (all made extra intimate by Dani Pearce’s idea to shoot it on medium format) The second thing I like about it, is that it somehow manages to check the exhaustive list of prerequisites that test well for government focus groups. Showing a variety of ages and backgrounds, check. Communicating papers from the government policy team, check. Multiple scene montage execution, check.”
