We are drawn into a world of someone who has had enough. Enough of being talked to like an ignorant consumer, being sold irrelevant aspirational nonsense by brands, who claim to know her.

We find our protagonist amidst a passing oblivious crowd on a street corner. She steps up onto a small crate, elevating her just above the masses, not unlike a street corner preacher. She begins to rant into the crowd, frantically trying to save our souls from vacuous and unattainable lifestyle ideals. All around her, set into the urban landscapes, are poster billboards displaying censored beer advertising cliches. With fire in her eyes and a powerful mix of sarcasm, hope, despair, and utter conviction she delivers her speech. Her words swirl, painting pictures of overvalued stereotypes, morally manicured men, luxurious speedboat models and fake illustrious beer histories.

She remains defiant. There is another way, Brewdog Lost Lager.

Ours is a story of how lager has lost it’s way. For decades in the UK, lager has been known as a best-served icy-cold, tasteless liquid. It’s the choice of chavs, supported by an old-fashioned toxic lad culture and a rich history of nationalistic football hooliganism. Superficial beer advertising has come to represent implausible lifestyle ideals, that mean nothing. In the mainstream UK beer market apathy is rife and consumers aren’t provoked to behave differently. For Brewdog, this apathy is our enemy.

The Soapbox. In the U.K. and the U.S. there is rich history of soapbox oratory. A soapbox crate provided a free and easily portable temporary platform for street corner speakers attempting to be seen and heard at improvised meetings where they would often give provocative speeches to passersby on religious or political and cultural themes.

This piece captures the raw, contemporary and countercultural nature of Brewdog.

Reeling against the delusions of mainstream culture and unattainable lifestyle ideals, this performance piece had to be delivered with absolute conviction and credibility.

Our protagonist is not an actor, but a driven and ambitious musical talent, she feeds the monologue with genuine emotion, from genuine circumstance.

Visually disruptive from the start, the film creates an unsettling sense of confrontation and frustration rooted in these direct truths. This is done by taking rhythmic performance shots, crash zooms and whips, extreme close ups, split diopta, hand cranking and step printing all captured on 35mm, to create a frantic, observational and sometimes disembodied view. The treatment continually ramps up the defiance allowing the viewer to be dramatically immersed in every fluctuation of emotion. The fusion of high pace music videography with classic cinematic techniques creates something truly distinctive, unsettling and rousing.