Vaughan Arnell Talks Bunnies, Easter Eggs and Why he Wants to be in Aldi’s Gang

The king of directing music videos, Vaughan Arnell tackles retail with his latest commercial for Aldi this Easter. Bringing a joyful Mexican twist to the festivities, we are greeted with a table full of mouth watering food from Aldi. Taking on a playful spin, we see singing lemons, tweeting birds, a mariachi band and even a dancing bunny creating a colourful spring bonanza! I like it like that!

Merman sit down with Vaughan about the shoot and directing rabbits. 

This is a fun departure for you into the wild world of retail. How did this collaboration come about? 

I had met Dave from McCann on the Aldi Christmas shoot a couple of years back when Kevin the Carrot met Mr Robbie Williams. I came on board to film all the live action stuff with Robbie and the agency and client really liked the energy and pace that we brought to the shoot so we pitched on the next Aldi Easter and won it! 

Do you think your work on music videos influenced your directing on this particular shoot?

Big time! Dave really liked the style and spontaneity of a music video and as it was a two day shoot on a limited budget, we had to approach using this mindset, thinking on our feet and sounding out what would work well. We sprinkled the music video world to give a real ‘freshness’ and by doing this, without sounding cheesy, everyday on the shoot became amazing! Not often you get tough shoots that are that are so much fun.

This feels very joyful. What was so great about this shoot?

Every person on the shoot! We cast our crew especially so all the team that worked with me previously on music videos, came on the shoot. Everybody brought their ‘A’ game, everyone wanted to be there. There was a really great vibe. It was like working with Take That, The Spice Girls and One Direction, the energy and pizzazz makes you feel like you’re part of a gang. Well, it felt exactly the same on this shoot. I actually got withdrawal symptoms when it was over. True story.

There’s a lot of VFX/ post in this commercial. It has an old school ‘Disney’ feel about it, did you enjoy adding these flourishes?

We wanted to use as many mediums as possible on this shoot. We initially made a mood film that incorporated all these different styles so it was a whirlpool of creativity. Freefolk did a brilliant job and we’re thrilled with the end result and hope this leads to many more collaborations.