Blacklist director Saiman Chow worked closely with The Hive to craft a campy six-spot stop-motion campaign chronicling the comically violent uprising of Cadbury Screme Eggs. As zombie-inspired spin-offs of Cadbury’s classic Creme Eggs, Screme Eggs are filled with green goo instead of the usual white and yellow combo.
Horrific? Maybe. Delicious? Definitely.
Conceptually, all six spots were conceived as an homage to zombie films and classic horror tropes — references to Hitchcock, 28 Days Later, The Walking Dead, Shawn of the Dead, and even Thriller are apparent throughout the campaign.
Authentically old, authentically gooey
“The key to bringing out the humor in the spots was in our being faithful to the films that inspired the campaign,” said Blacklist director Saiman Chow, who worked closely with the agency to ensure that all of the scenes were as spooky as the originals. A big part of that was in the production design, which Chow oversaw.
“Though the films are stylized, realistic art direction was essential to create the sense that these stories were taking place in the real world,” Chow said. “The idea is that the Screme Egg invasion is happening right now, right under our feet”. Chow also brought in an Aging Specialist to give all of the props and sets a post-apocalyptic look and feel.
And then of course, there was the goo, which was a challenge to animate, according to Blacklist Producer Hana Shimizu. "We experimented with toothpaste, hair gel, food coloring, marshmallows — nothing seemed to be quite right. In the end, we used the actual goo from the Screme Eggs, which I think made it that much more authentic."
The devil’s in the details
The spots were shot simultaneously, with crews working in shifts around the clock to meet the project’s aggressive timeline. “Because everything was shot at the same time, we had to approach the production in a schematic way,” noted Shimizu. “We had different teams for each set, but ended up overlapping schedules to capture everything we needed.”
Chow and team had to have an airtight plan in order to get all the shots they needed for the films. “Cinematic storytelling is notoriously difficult in stop motion”, said Chow, “Every detail needed to be planned out meticulously before we set foot on the set. These films were meant to be scary and unexpected — but we wanted to keep the actual production of them as spook-free as possible.”
Source: Blacklist