P&O wanted something completely different to what they or any of their competitors had ever done before. They asked us to break the category. We had a cruise client who didn't want to make a cruise ad.

The P&O audience are unpretentious Aussies who love cruises.

This ad was the pep talk of all pep talks. A no holds barred motivational talk we've all given ourselves before a long haul journey.

The original script involved a series of people giving themselves a pep talk in the mirror. In the directors treatment, Owen then elevated and visualised the metaphor of the weary traveller mind-state by placing our characters within mirrored spaces that act as a metaphor for their sense of being “trapped”. He devised the idea or moving mirrored sets that placed one or two key elements from mundane travel within the space, duplicating them and manipulating them. Things like travel coach seats, the sink in an airport toilet or those zippy barriers they use to corral us into queues. The result was confusing and mesmerising. In terms of performance direction, the director took the idea of a Nike-style anthem film and gradually pulled that apart. Our characters begin with complete focus, but as the film progresses, their performances gradually shift to the point where he portrays an almost total lack of