Ballantine Campaign Offers the Taste of a Job Well Done

Niall Coffey crafts Ballantine's 'The Taste of a Job Well Done' – a film exuding panache and effortless style. Seven years of expert distillation and maturation in American oak barrels result in the ultimate pour of Ballantine's Scotch Whisky.

A big challenge here for Familia was making the transitions from the bar into the barrel room work with the time and budget we had. The team had to come up with transitions which worked with the existing footage, but knew it had to keep it simple enough that they could be achieved in a day. Making that bottle top transition work was definitely a challenge, the team had to make sure it filled the frame and orientated itself the same was way as the barrel, but its roll also had to match the speed of the existing footage, all while not feeling like a forced transition.

The very concept of figuring out how to advertise alcohol in France is also tricky as French broadcasting regulations mean we are not allowed to see anyone drinking and the team could not have anyone in the bar. 

Visually the team just wanted the footage to have a bit of grit to it. Not too clean. So Familia shot on K35’s, which bring so much character to the image. Familia also shot on the Alexa 35 and we burned the grain into the footage (my first time doing this). Aaran thought that it makes the texture feel like it isn’t sitting so much on top of the footage but is actually a part of the image from the get go and he was totally right.