Making exciting and emotive content is what we’re all about… which is why we were especially pleased to build on our relationship with Unilever by making a series of 25 short films for their “Dirt is Good” campaign.

The films featured children from around the world being challenged to have a go at new outdoor physical activities to improve their self-confidence. Shot in various locations across the globe including the jungle in Brazil, the films featured Brazilian, Argentinean, Spanish, French and British children from all different walks of life aged between 8-13 and two of the world’s leading child behavioural experts from Yale University.

We filmed three different activities –mountain biking, zip lining into a pool of mud and extreme cake making – three contrasting activities, each demonstrating the huge physiological benefits for children in ‘having a go at new things’. 

 The rational is that by trying new and challenging activities and then finding out that they can handle them, kids learn to deal with difficult situations at an early age. This can have a big impact on them in later life. 

Our fantastic team featured the trails director’s from ITV’s I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, a children’s producer from Children’s BBC, the director of photography from the BBC’s Dragon’s Den and the producer of Bruce Parry’s BBC 1 Amazon series. A red hot team that dealt with the huge challenges of finding the children across different continents, then working with them in very hot environments (43 degrees on shoot days!) as well as managing all the key health and safety issues. 

The films have gone down a storm with the client and we’re very excited about their upcoming release date… So a huge thank you to the kids, their parents, our production partner in Brazil – Limite- and of course the Plastic team! 

Watch this space! 

We love working with big brands to deliver informative entertaining content about often complex subjects. This film for BDO was a crucial part of the messaging that saw 46,000 people in 1,138 offices spread across 110 countries come together behind a single brand. The combined turnover for this company was now in excess of $5 billion a year.

The messaging had to be clear about the reasons for joining together and lay a foundation for the future. BDO's CEO Jeremy Newman wrote in his company blog  "I must admit I was a bit nervous about this when it was initially proposed and whilst it was being made but I am delighted with the result.  It is intended for both internal and external use and I hope it conveys what BDO is and what makes us different to our key stakeholders, particularly our existing and prospective clients and all our people."

Through a combination of great motion graphics and beautiful photography we captured the essence of BDO as a global player.

Our director carried the board below all over Europe so we could put together this final shot. Joe we salute you !

Shooting the B-Roll film for the new Dove commercial meant a quick trip to LA to get on set and create some new content. The concept of the ad was based around mens comfort. Interestingly this meant taking a couple of men who were'nt actors and sticking them in front of the camera. Here are a couple of shots from set.

Having worked on some smaller campaigns with Edelman PR, our partnership was to be cemented with our latest and grandest venture to date– Shell’s Fuel Save Challenge.

  THE 7 FUELSAVE AMBASSADORS 

This ambitious project aimed to educate people around the world about how to save money on their weekly fuel bill. Shell wanted to do this through a series of films that blended brand key messages with good old fashioned entertainment, as well as turning 7 local celebrities including 8 times LeMan winner Tom Kristensen into Shell FuelSave Ambassadors.

  TOM KRISTENSEN  

So Shell asked us to produce 22 pieces of work- including 7 six minute celebrity-led Top Gear style films, 7 EPK’s, 7 introduction to training films (shot using the latest green screen technology) and a 7 minute internal film celebrating the best of the campaign over the last three years- all for worldwide distribution.

 THE FUEL SAVE CHALLENGE 

This was all captured in an intensive four day shoot at the 2009 Shell Eco-marathon in Germany. Plastic worked intensively with Edelman to ensure all aspects of the shoot ran smoothly.Through our amazing German production manager Imke Sommerkamp and production partner Kobalt we had a crew of 20 who all completely delivered.

We installed 2 x Avid systems on site to make sure that the EPKs we created were cut and then uploaded to hit the news cycles in countries across the planet, all within 24 hours of being shot.

The next challenge… to make the 7 films in 5 different languages!

Being attached to a globally successful PR campaign is certainly a brilliant way to make content. 

  THE PLASTIC TEAM 

Building on our relationship with Redwood we are creating a DVD to help educate Clarks Shoes Health Professionals around the world. We actually commenced production a couple of months ago and have completed a weeks shooting in New Zealand and a weeks shooting in the UK. We are currently entering the final stage of post and are really excited about the finished product. As well as being carried out at either end of the world this shoot has had to meet some very tight production parameters and it has only been through our close relationship with some great people at Redwood that we have been able to do this.

Its that time of year again for the FATBOY WINTER SUN tour. Yes we are off to Brazil once again for the 4th year to rock the p-art-ay and generally get some sunshine action in a Brazilain stylee (I won't go into too much more detail as certain people will give me a slap). Typically its chucking it down here in Brighton and as I made my way around town today the local rag The Argus declared "Fatboy plans massive beach gig".
Here we go again looks like 09 is gonna be busy !!

James - "I've just returned from a 10 day shoot in Vegas filming Graham Norton for
a BBC1 prime-time show scheduled for transmission in January, 'The One and Only...'

In Vegas Graham got under the skin of the city's tribute industry, meeting
several larger-than-life characters who've devoted their lives to being
someone else.

The shoot culminated with a meeting with Mr Vegas himself - Mr Barry Manilow, filmed in his spectacular penthouse suite at the Hilton hotel (Elvis' old room)."

Sean Nolan was invited to the Royal Television awards in Manchester on Satuday night, and Dragons Den series 4 won "Best factual entertainment programme" 

"when these two get together, it's TV alchemy..." Helen Bullough - chair for the Royal Television society (North), talking about Paul Mackay and Sean Nolan, while accepting the award..

"I went up on stage with Director Paul Mackay and BBC Exec Helen Bullough. It was fully awesome!, I'm delighted to have been involved with such a great show. Series 4 looked great, and I think series 5 looks even better, so I'm really hoping we'll be back next year" - Sean Nolan.

 L - R.. Graham Hoyland, Helen Bullough, Paul Mackay and our own Sean Nolan - after receiving the RTS for Dragons den on saturday.

We have been drafted in as WEB 2.0 video content experts for publishing behemoth Redwood. As part of the Omnicom empire this is akin to being bought in to show Lewis Hamilton how to drive.  Here it is in simple terms. Redwood do publishing.....Boots, Landrover, Volvo, Marks and Spencer, Aston Martin, Royal Mail ....you get the picture.

As video content and demand for video content explodes.......video creation is becoming the new publishing.  

Plastic Pictures do video creation.
Big Publishers need us to show them how.
End of........................or probably just the beginning !

For those that saw it I hope you will agree that we could do with Theo as the new front man of light entertanment a-la Paul O'Grady. 

James is producing BBC1's huge new Entertainment show for saturday nights at Endemol, with Graham Norton - The one and only... Due to air in the New Year. Part documentary, shot out in Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

Sean Nolan will be the UK camera super for the show, shooting all the U.K. ob doc stuf along with the multi cam performance and all the funky profiles... Plastic talent at the leading edge..