Alcobev

Alcohol is the most heavily restricted category we shoot in India, and the restriction is the brief. Surrogate advertising rules mean the film often cannot show the product being consumed, cannot show anyone under twenty-five, and in a good deal of media cannot show the bottle at all. What is left is craft, provenance and atmosphere — which is precisely why these films live or die on camerawork rather than on a script.

What we shoot

• Bottle and liquid films — pours, ice, condensation, macro texture
• Distillery and provenance stories
• Bar takeovers, launches and brand nights
• Bartender and master-blender features
• Cocktail and serve films for trade and social

The hard part

Liquid does not take direction. A pour looks right for about a second and a half, so we shoot it at high frame rate and light it to hold highlight detail in the glass without blowing out the label. Glass is a mirror, which means the lighting rig, the crew and the room all end up in shot unless the set is built to keep them out. We black out, flag and polarise as a matter of routine, and we shoot far more takes of a pour than of anything else on the day.

What you get

• A hero film cut to the compliance constraints your media plan actually faces
• Vertical cuts for reels and stories, framed at the shoot rather than cropped later
• Macro and texture plates you can re-cut into future campaigns
• Stills pulled from the same setups, colour-matched to the film

We have shot for single malts, tequilas, gins, rums and blended whiskies, in distilleries, hotel bars and built sets. Bring the compliance rules to the pre-production call and the film gets built around them instead of being re-edited past them.