Cannes Lions

The Dance

THE SWEETSHOP, Auckland / LION NATHAN / 2018

Film

Overview

Entries

Credits

Overview

Description

This is a smart beer ad. This story contemporizes guys in a way that celebrates mates, but not in the typical way.

It begins with Dave and Gary, rough and ready guys. Dave is getting married and needs to perfect his first dance. Sh!t, first he needs to learn how to dance altogether. And Gary is his dance partner and coach.

The film is peppered with other men from the workplace, upping the character factor – a gnarly old guy with a bad haircut, an oddly awkward apprentice, one of those guys who likes watching Formula 1 and has a head like an onion, the cleaner. And it’s through their eyes that we watch Dave’s journey.

Then we unleash the wedding! By the end of the story you can’t help but be swept up in the emotional connection to the dance.

Execution

My gut feeling here was that we’d put Speight’s on the map by injecting this story with a fresh, interesting and unexpected cast. To lift this into a truly epic and memorable spot, my approach was to cast truly interesting and unique ‘real life’ people, that get more and more characterful and unexpected as we go, which escalates the humor as the story progresses.

I wanted to created what I call the avalanche effect to get a laugh. This is when you cleverly edit faces and actions and dialogue together, ramping it all up in such a wonderfully idiotic way, that you have no choice but to piss out laughing.”

The casting was essential in pre production – it’s I can style and develop characters, there’s a need to curate the humans to be a unique but relatable group of people which we’ll spend the time getting just right.

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