PREFACE What I think is truly exciting and original about this campaign is it feels as timeless, honest and simple as the food. It feels like a moment to enjoy and celebrate in the everyday comfort foods that we all love and with the stripped back approach there is a romance and beauty. Its simple. Simple food made simply and with love.I feel together we could create something that makes the viewer feel a new intimacy with the food, it feels almost touchable and accessible so much that you want to rush out and buy the ingredients to make it. Combined with the clever use of typography, that will enhance the visuals, the viewer feels a great connection to the story and the food - its about nostalgia, warmth and those trusted ingredient that makes us happy and at the end of watching it there is a glow inside us. Without using slo-mo or any camera tricks or SFX, a well paced edit and clever music choice will create an ad that allows you to just really stop and enjoy the food.The beauty of food is in texture, just as it is in our homes and most enjoyed environments. With photography that will concentrate on textures and accentuate those feelings of satisfaction, we’ll emphasise that even the simple meals, the quick bites can be rich, personalised experiences with just a few simple, high-quality ingredients that Sainsbury’s provides. No matter who you are there is nothing more delicious, heart warming, even comforting than a humble sausage sandwich.
2
LOOK & STYLE We will throw out the old rules of food shoots that often feel patronising and pretentious. Instead showing reality and pulling on our audiences heart strings and memories. These ads will be built out of a bounty of rich, intimate imagery. Words alone aren’t what make up these special moments, but rather sights, smells, textural qualities, colours, and feelings. I am thinking that for the beginning of the campaign, we do not need to see the faces of our performers. We will create a sense of who they are, that they are there, coming home, tossing a scarf on the table. As the campaign proceeds then perhaps we build on the people a little as we go. But I feel that the first ads need to be establishing that simple connection to the food, we can still hint at our people’s lives with small background details. It could be the tactile details that tell us that a man is returning home for a long-anticipated sausage sandwich - the rush of the door opening, the tossing aside of the scarf, the eager selection of ingredients, the voracious assembly of the dish, that satisfyingly crunchy and juicy first bite… perhaps we hear some of these moments and details, rather than see them all? Overall, a warmth in the imagery, with natural tones, natural colour, glowing light, and a shallow depth of field will create that nostalgic very real look. Daylight and a handheld, documentary approach to camera will work in harmony with the content and carefully integrated typography to achieve a look which is both effortlessly modern and timeless. Food will be captured with an eye for texture, which can be beautifully contrasted with a contemporary, smooth typographic treatment which will live symbiotically with the image.
3
TONE Joy, satisfaction, and a relatable sense of place are our tonal goals. These people aren’t cramming anything fancy into their busy days - instead they’re looking for high-quality, great-tasting materials for the meals they know and love. Familiarity does not equal blandness, but rather a more intense happiness when we take that first bite. The viewer will not only taste the snacks along with our cooks, they’ll also experience those familiar feelings of time and place. The everyday made special.
THE FOOD Capturing the uniqueness of each dish and its ingredients will be the goal of each script, with the idyllic versions of everyday items on display. The bread will burst with crumbs as the crunchy shell breaks, while the centre is pillowy, soft and sweet. Fruits will glisten with gentle colour, mushrooms would be deliciously dense and earthy, and cheese thickly gooey. A general, desaturation of the overall image might be employed in the grading so that colourful ingredients subtly sing a little, while the earthy ingredients appear even more richly appetising. The meals will be presented as simple recipes that result in edible craftwork that are a joy to look at as much as eat.
4
THE TYPE The words are almost part of the food, they need to live with the images, never over-powering them or being too clever, we should read them, they should be beautiful, but like everything else, effortlessly simple. We need to work together on this and can continue developing how they look and work within the image as we prep, shoot and edit the films. I’d really like to do an early test on how typography would sit within the frame in order to make sure the type is never an after-thought.
5
6
PRE PACKAGED FOOD TEST So lets do a test on the cheesecake to show how the prepared food will work. There is great potential here if this item is further into the campaign to create a story and possibly to be a moment to share guilty pleasures. There are a few scenarios that i have thought about to bring this to life. Story 1 We see a lovely cheesecake sitting on the side , we then see a mothers hands washing some beautiful strawberries in a colander in the sink , she shakes the water off , we then cut back to the cheesecake and a kids hand is putting chocolate buttons on slowly , then the strawberries are added. They finish by pouring ,spooning on cream Story 1 Teenage girls running down the stairs in need of a sugar fix. The cheesecake is on the side we see popcorn being made in a pan, white chocolate being pulled off the shelf . They each start sprinkling popcorn raspberries and melted white chocolate over the top. Story 3 We feel a couple come home from a night out , they kick off their heels in the kitchen there is a one slice of cheesecake left. She melts some glossy blackcurrant jam in a saucepan and then pours it over the cake they then add single cream. or FOOD centric approach -a perfect slice of cheesecake being pulled out of the whole cake revealing the creamy inside of the cheesecake with crumbs falling away as the piece is lifted out of shot. - a slice of cake on a plate as compote (rasp/strawb) is spooned over the top and drizzles down the side of the cake, the shiny glossy pink of the compote with pop against the creamy cake - berries falls onto the plate (stawbs/rasp/balck/blue) depending on season and they settle next to the slice - a dusting of icing sugar lightly falls on the fruit and the cake contrasting with the colour of the berries and compote We can take any of these ideas and add to or take away from in order to find the perfect honest and intimate balance we need that will allow the already prepared food to work well within the campaign 7
8
CASTING I do feel it is important to cast the people we are filming. we need to believe the hand that drops the scarf, or shuts the door, and then prepares the food. They need to live and breathe the moment just as the viewer will. The performer will need to breathe humanity without saying a word and without us seeing their face. We should look for people who cook – so we believe their prep of the food. They should probably come to the cook-up with us, as a “rehearsal” to really help their own natural performance when we shoot. We need to feel that familiar family dynamic right away, know the history of an older couple the moment we see a snippet of their life, and smile at the effervescence of a group of children without missing a beat. When the audience relates to the performers, they’ll relate to their hunger for and satisfaction with each of the meals that we aren’t able to taste ourselves through the screen, but can certainly imagine.
9
LOCATION I feel it is really important to shoot this on location, in someone’s real kitchen, in someone’s real house - not on an over-lit set on a stage. We are recreating the real world here and everything has to be as real as possible.
10
FILMMAKING The camera should never get in the way of these delicious products and the people enjoying them. A naturalism in the staging of the scenes will be captured with a mix of wide, handheld shots. The food will be captured with more intimate close-ups to really spotlight the beautiful surfaces of a sausage, or the soft, fibrous tissue of the bread. We should use a really small, intimate camera with a large sensor and older, beautiful soft prime lenses. Perhaps a Red Epic stripped back to as small as it can be, or even a high end DSLR set up. Both these routes would give us a camera that is quite literally held in the hand, so we can be really intimate with our subject – the food. Editing will have a gentle energy to keep people interested and capture all the details, without at any time feeling “edited”. Allowing us to enjoy a relaxing vision of a well-earned meal. There will be no need for complicated moves, overwrought special effects, or other jarring techniques.
11
Between fast food commercials and other supermarkets presenting hyper-perfect, complicated concotions, food just doesnt look relatable on the telly anymore. Here we have an opportunity to show off many of Sainsbury’s quality items in a context to which audiences can relate, and speak to them on an emotional level. They won’t just taste the food, but feel the satisfaction that comes with it. They’ll also witness very obtainable, but very high-quality simple meals come together, with the promise that Sainsbury’s can provide all they need to put them together for themselves. Thanks, Lana.
9