Das Handwerk, the German Federation of Craftsmen, turns the act of fixing a broken boiler into a modern-day Western.

The two-minute film is set in a snowy modern version of a Western town, where an old lady comes screaming out of her house in terror. She flags down a plumber in his truck, who bursts down the door of the house cowboy-style to find a priest appearing to be performing some kind of exorcism. To tense banjo music, he descends to the peril in basement and wrestles with the roaring iron stove, eventually transforming it into a modern-looking boiler. Then, he drives off into the sunset, watched by the grateful old lady and her admiring daughter, as the caption on screen asks: "So. What did you do today?”

We decided to make a unique rendition of the classic dusty-road-horse-and-tumbleweed-world and take it into the contemporary world.

I wanted to make sure that we created imagery that was both beautiful and textured, but also visually playful to capture the viewer. Most importantly the camera work needed to speak to our main aim of building suspense with a touch of cool humour, meaning that the intensity of our shots should echo the escalating tension of the film, punctuated with perfectly timed comic moments.

We tried to enhance the coolness of Mark, the lead, with the camera. He’s hidden for the first half minute of the spot. You see his car, his foot, a reflection of him in the door knob.

We story boarded every single frame in the film in sketch. It’s not that often what you shoot is exactly what you edit together, but in this case it was.