Going behind the Water Works in Courage’s Latest Spot for Xylem Starring Pep Guardiola
Courage is part of the SPORTFIVE family alongside Brave. Courage creates everything from beautifully crafted commercials and photography to thumb-stopping social content. The team are specialists in the whole production process, from idea creation and pitch through to delivery. LBB speaks to executive producer, Peter King.
Xylem - Take the Waste Out of Water
LBB> What was the brief for Xylem and what was the strategic thinking behind it?
Peter> 80% of global wastewater enters the environment untreated. This mismanagement of harmful toxins puts our vital ecosystems at risk. Most people don’t feel the impact personally, they lack urgency to do something about it, with a passive hope that others will. Our objective was to make the water crisis feel real, relevant and urgent, to create interest to learn more through Xylem.
LBB> This is the latest campaign for Xylem and Manchester City with Pep Guardiola, what was your vision for this film?
Peter> We aimed to create a piece that connects with the audience on an emotional level, creating a strong visceral reaction that moves them to act rather than just passively watch on their screens. The creative team came up with the brilliant idea of water pouring out of screens and flooding a home, taking the issue right to the viewer. To achieve this, it had to feel like it was a real home being flooded, hoping to get the audience to put themselves in the position of the family affected.
LBB> This was quite a big scale production! Was there a lot of planning involved?
Peter> There was an incredible amount of planning and detail involved in the production. We had to capture the whole house sequence in a single day, so everything had to be tested and meticulously worked out. Kevin Phipps, our production designer, worked closely with us throughout pre-production, creating architectural schematics for the set and tested different products to create an environmentally friendly fake sewage. The gravy browning that we used in the water only had one attempt at the cascading stairs shot as we wouldn’t have had time to reset the carpet, so that was quite tense!
LBB> Given the project is about wastewater, how did you tackle shooting a flooded set without wasting water?
Peter> Although we had to use practical water effects to create the realism needed, we never had more than a few inches of water on set, despite it looking like the water is waist high. Instead, for the hero flooded shot, we cleverly created an optical illusion with a black wooden platform with a one metre square well to stand in the middle. The platform had a four-inch lip, so when this was filled to the brim with our dirty water, it looked like the whole room was flooded. This meant we avoided the nightmare logistical issues of having massive volumes of water.
LBB> You used several sustainable methods on set, can you talk us through them?
Peter> We had to ensure that we were as green as possible in the set build, using second hand, recycled and recyclable materials throughout. We kept track of where everything went after the shoot as Kevin worked hard to make sure our green ambitions were met. Through testing we discovered that gravy browning gave the water a great sewage-like colour, and vegan cocktail foamer provided the right density of foam on top.
LBB> This was produced by Brave’s production arm Courage. You’ve been going for some time now, what’s next for Courage?
Peter> Courage was established at the end of 2021 and kicked off with projects for the UEFA Women’s EURO 2022 with LEGO and Pandora, making films that challenge the unconscious bias towards girls in sport. Since then we’ve been really lucky to work on a range of projects with a good message at their heart, such as this Xylem film and our work with Fiverr and Netflix. We are shooting an exciting project in May with another big sporting talent, and have other projects in the pipeline that follow up from the great work we produced last year. The aim is to grow Courage globally over the next few years, aided by the support of our parent company SPORTFIVE.
Fiverr - Level the Playing Field
Lego - Play Makes Anything Possible
