That's AUssie Campaign

Pre-Production

This was another campaign that came in late in 2024, and needed to be delivered early in the New Year. This provided some extra pressure with the holiday break fastly approaching, but thankfully we took the time to brainstorm as a company and locked into the scenarios that would serve the campaign messaging best, while also achievable within the time frame. The client approved four scenarios: Magpie Season, Beachgoer, Tanning Man & Humble Guy. Four separate locations, four separate talent required… one short window to achieve it.

We wanted to be smart with our locations, shooting 2x per day to minimise our gear rental time, while maximising on weather and available talent. This approach meant our pre-production time could be extensive and prepare us for the shoot to be successive.

The next phase was for us to cast our hero talent - after receiving a number of amazing applications via our casting platform on our Spicy Tiger website, we got to have some fun mixing and matching the best possible combinations to represent the Australian experience.

Finally, our pre-production concluded with some planning for the VFX component of 2 of our 4 scenarios. Eric, our Videographer and VFX artist, completed extensive tests on building a digitally generated Magpie for our ‘Magpie Season’, and we also did lots of research on how to accomplish a sun-burnt look practically, using VFX makeup, and not having to resort to unreliable digital post production that can be highly precarious, depending on weather and lighting. Feeling prepared, we were ready to approach our first day of shooting!

Production

Each scenario was limited to about 2-3 setups, amounting to about 5 seconds of screen time. So while the scenarios themselves were simple, outside forces proved to be a hurdle! Our first day of shooting gave us both a storm and then extreme sun/heat. Unfortunately, the storm arrived at the tail end of our first location, the beach, which wasn’t ideal considering the gag is that the sun beating down on the sand makes it unbearable to walk across. However, through clever setups, we were able to frame out the sky, focus on our talent, and use camera tricks (a ‘zolly’ - zoom + dolly at the same time, to create what’s known as the ‘Vertigo effect’, where the camera simultaneously zooms in while moving back). All these elements re-focused the scene and allowed us to find humour in our talent's performance, without relying on the elements.

By the time we arrived at the second location, the storm had passed, but the skies parted, opening up to the belting sunshine we so needed previously. While this scenario (Tanning Man) was aided by the natural sunshine, it made our ability to genuinely have our talent out in the sun limited. But thankfully, while he was getting his fake sunburn VFX makeup applied by the professional Makeup Artist, we could rehearse the action and camera movements ourselves, meaning our talent could simply come out, lay down on the towel and we could shoot his efficiently and get him out of the sun in a timely manner.

Our second shoot day, for both scenario 3 & 4, needed to be rescheduled as Sydney was hit with some wild weather that would have been unsafe conditions to be filming in. But this was a sort of blessing in disguise as it gave us a chance to swap our initial location for one that meant we could shoot both scenarios at the same location, minimising our travel time.

The 3rd scenario, Magpie Season, was the one we were most nervous about, purely because of the active nature of the shots. We rehearsed in pre-production how we would mount the Go-Pro to the bicycle basket, so we could track the actors movement while maintaining the frantic movements of her cycling. Once we got our camera secured, we took our time with different styles of settings to allow for multiple options in the edit. We then moved our setup to more establishing shots using our cinematic camera and lenses, so then the switch between footage to the Go-Pro would feel energetic and visceral.

The final scenario, Humble Guy, was way more chill in terms of setup. The only thing we had to wait for was the sun to go down to more of a ‘magic hour’ vibe to truly land the message of The Jerky Co. being an idyllic snack to match your idyllic camping trip. Once our camera was up, we timed everything to perfection and it was a smooth way to finalise this huge campaign.

Post-Production

The assembly for That’s Aussie was a fun process. The shots worked out perfectly, and we were particularly proud of how accurately we translated the brief, vision and storyboard to the screen. Putting in our VO Artists work with the catchy tagline, That’s Aussie, just brought it all to life. This paired with some animated titles, gave the campaign the punchiness we hoped for.

The computer generated magpie Eric had been working on ultimately turned up better than we expected. There were some teething issues with the lighting generated on Blender compared to that of the actual scene, but after adjusting some colouring of the bird, the direction it travelled around the hero character and the lighting, the Magpie Season scenario became the perfect opening to this campaign.

Results

The boys at the Jerky Co. had little to no notes, again reiterating that we had smashed the brief, bringing it to life. The campaign has since played on broadcast television in Perth and been used both as individual scenarios, and as a complete spot on social media.

There’s a lot of room for future ad placement with this one, and longevity for the spirit of this campaign to sprout future iterations… We can't wait to expand upon it in further and make ‘That’s Aussie’ a household slogan that forever brings The jerky Co. to the minds of audiences Australia wide.