Santam- The Real McCoy

Santam “The Real Mccoy”

Eugenie recently had the chance to work on the excellent new Santam commercial, featuring none other than Sir Ben Kingsley (and a few not-so-cheap imitations).

The commercial was shot in Cape Town at various locations, on 35mm- still the preferred format for most South African filmmakers despite the popularity of some digital formats.

The shoot was 3 days long and Eugenie had four days of offline before presenting to the director, Dean Blumberg.
“He is a talented director, very well versed in the language of film and committed to achieving the best results possible” says Eugenie.

“The challenge was to not reveal too much of the impostors while at the same time trying not to hide them too much either with shots from behind or profile shots. The viewer had to be fooled but not pick up that they were being fooled.
“We also tried to achieve a fluid edit with as many flawless cut points as possible while using the best performances in 60sec”

A good percentage of the shots were Steadicam (the talented Dale Rodkin) which was very well done considering how difficult it was to achieve depth and remain in focus especially on extreme close ups.

The music really works hard for the ad and takes it to another level and really embodies the correct tone.
The composer, the prolific Rob Schroeder, has finally had his chance to be on the other side of the lens, so to speak, and was one of the impostors cast by Dean.

After offline, the process was completed in Johannesburg, with a final grade on Baselight at Pudding and the usual magic from Christian van der Walt at Sinister Studios.