Julian talks about his latest project, “Snow Angels” for BBH London and Lynx.
“As the temperature rose in Australia I went over to shoot snow in London. The images were shot in various locations around London over three days. Our location manager Richard Ellingham had a task finding locations that would allow us to lay down fake snow. Armed with printed layouts of lewd shapes in the snow Richard approached various councils, avoiding schools and religious organisations.
We ended up in a carpark in Old St, a suburban street in Hackney, and a shopfront in croydon.
All the snow was set dressed in camera by the people of Snow Business – they have probably had a hand in every film you have ever seen with snow in it. The snow is made from paper fibre and comes out of a cannon-y tube thing. I am still getting dust out of my camera.
The snow angel shapes were carefully researched by the crew, with the pre pro meeting with the client discussing double cowboy, reverse double cowboy, 69, and various permutations of doggy style. They were further discussed at length on set, and when words failed occasionally mimed.
Our first shoot day was the carpark – 900 square meters of snow laid out was by far logistically the hardest. We know the shapes worked when a few office workers in nearby buildings came by to ask what was going on and give some helpful opinions. I fought back the urge to tell them it was an ad for Cornflakes, and watch them try to figure that one out.
Next night we found ourselves in a gentrified area behind Commercial Rd flower market, battling rain, some of the locals stickybeaking tried to explain what was going on to their kids.
Then, for the shop front, and by unfortunate logistical timings, we made the difficult journey to Croydon on a Saturday night. I’d rather not talk about it.
Although they have only been out for a few days they have already been chosen as Print winner this week on Best Ads on TV.com”
Thank you Julian for regaling us with your on set tales!
You know those jobs that look really simple? The ones that weren’t and you just WISH you had a stop frame of the whole thing to prove to people how incredible you are for pulling something off? Well, we want to say a big ole thanks to Nicole and Miles at TBWA for having the foresight to ask Julian to make a stop frame of the Visa ‘Go’ build. It’s really made us debate within the agency whether we should do this for all our shoots. A huge thanks to tin&ed and my professional partner and personal hero, Jeremy from Jacky Winter for all the late nights and patience and diplomacy.
After a month away in UK shooting snow angels having sex, Julian will be back on Monday. And with his books completely up to date, we are ready to rock and roll.
All over the world, creatives have been commissioned with a global brief to create the word ‘go.’ in a variety of different forms, internally coined ‘gollages’ by TBWA. For this execution for Visa Debit, tin&ed were asked to bring their model making skills to build this massive sculpture out of new and recycled computer parts using a pretty clever trick of perspective with ‘Go’ starting in the air on a rig, and ending on the floor of the space. The retouched final art shown above, masterfully shot by Julian, took three days to build and about 30 seconds to shoot, lit by simple coloured fluro tubes only.
Julian has a new site. Of course it’s at the old address. Having a URL like http://www.julianwolkenstein.com makes him really easy to find. It was designed by the super talentedJeff Burch
which you really should go out and buy. I read the last issue cover to cover and had to scold myself for having no idea what was going on in the cool person world. Anyway, if you’re clicking through Julian’s site and notice any annoying bugs, feel free to let us know.
When Julian and I first moved back to Australia we had a competition between us to see who would get into the S section of the Herald social pages. I won of course within about six weeks of arriving. Not to be outdone, Julian was interviewed on the NBC New York Today show last night. They sent a car down to Exeter to collect him. It’s all a bit surreal to think of people in NY having a chuckle at the ponies while eating their breakfast. Neither of us are quite sure how any of this happened.
Those of you who are up at sparrow’s fart might have seen Julian’s ponies on the Today show on Channel 9 (and another show on Channel 7 that we also can’t watch) this morning. We got a 645am phone call to tell us but we don’t get any telly channels down here in the sticks. They were also featured on the front page of the Daily Mail’s website right up there with a story about Jack Tweed’s memory box he is making for Jade Goody before his sentencing and the story about the fat X-Factor singer who turned down a job on live radio.
Update: 7pm Friday. We have since heard of sightings in the UK Mirror, the UK Telegraph, and the Metro, see below – which has about a billion tube readers a day! Channel 5 have run a piece on the series, and someone even heard a RADIO presenter saying “Have you seen those horse images? They’ve made me really happy!”)
I was a North West London dweller while I lived there, so forgive me but I don’t know which of these is Fulham Broadway and which is the Custard Factory in Birmingham. Feel free to add a comment if you know. Fulham is a huge Aussie expat area so I am sure someone can set me straight. Julian flew to London to shoot the skyline for this campaign featuring Steve Carell, Sarah Silverman, and Kenny. I think after the Capital Radio job, Julian is the official London skyline photographer. Karmarama were really happy with the campaign. Julian gets really appreciative emails from the team almost every other week. Must be those English manners.
Julian shot M&C Saatchi’s first campaign since winning Freedom’s business. I won’t pretend he is a multi-talented genius (even though he really is). The stills were used to make the TVC. But lets pretend just for the afternoon that he directed the commercial too.
