Vol. 27
Here it is, your Christmas Cut Culture. What a lovely gift. No we didn’t keep the receipt. To close out the year we’re taking a look at a GOAT music video and a Christmas campaign guaranteed to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Then we’ll take you behind the scenes of our latest shoot… with a twist… before finishing up with an intro to our favourite set designer, multimedia artist and music journalist (yes those are all one person).
Cut Culture
Checkmate.
It’s Christmas, so we’re bringing you Easter eggs galore - because there are no rules and both holidays are but mere social constructs. And because Drake’s new music video is an absolute belter and it would be shameful not to include it. With that being said, if Drake was in your Spotify Wrapped we would recommend you spend 2024 trying to develop even a modicum of discernment and originality. Each time viewing the video reveals a different gem, with cultural references to The Office, Michael Jackson, Messi and Ronaldo’s gloomy LV chess match, the artists’ own previous album covers, and even the Spider-man pointing meme… to name a few. And don’t even get us started on some of the transitions. Pure visual ambrosia. Music video of the year? It’s definitely in with a shout. Things have come a long way since Mick Jagger and David Bowie spent the better part of an afternoon dancing in the street before calling it a day.
Don’t Stop Motion.
Alright, we couldn’t not include a Christmas ad in the closing Cut Culture of the year. And with this being the holiday of consumerism, who better to choose than the brand who have managed to permeate our collective public psyche to such an extent that their products have come to feel like essentials for most people? The Apple Christmas ad tells the tale of someone who has to park their passion project and turn up late for a job they presumably despise only to be admonished by a boss who looks like Mario after a divorce and a heavy couple years on the sauce. Princess Peach is with Wario now, you’ve got to let her go, fella. Rather than sticking a potato in his exhaust or slipping a dash of asbestos in his morning flat white, our protagonist gets her own back in the far more civilised manner of using her Apple products to animate a deservedly hellish experience for the boss’ cartoon self. But it turns out the poor auld fella just needed a friend. Aww. How unbearably sweet. I feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Granted that could be from the oysters I had for lunch. But once again Apple smash it out the park; a strong, emotive narrative that tugs on the heartstrings and champions a positive message all the while extolling very particular product benefits. Chef’s kiss.
2023 Wrapped.
In the spirit of the season, we’re throwing in a little Brucey bonus. Don’t mention it. Here’s just a little glimpse of all of things we’ve been up to this year, from cruising in classic convertibles in Miami to throwing private parties on public transport in Walthamstow and everything in between. What a year. See yous in 2024.
BTS
T’is the season of giving. But what’s the point of giving if you can’t brag about how nice you are? We recently took part in the IPA Intake program, which involved us hosting a class of students and making them sweat for a couple days by crafting their very own campaigns, from strategy and concepting, to pre-production, to shooting, to post-production, to presenting back to the whole agency (no pressure, kids…).
The brief was relatively simple: create a campaign including stills, AV and a TikTok that could be used on Mitre’s social channels. The students started out by doing some desk research into the brand to help them write creative treatments and build moodboards for the shoot. From there, we went down to a 5-a-side pitch to shoot what they had come up with (with a bit of help from some particularly fetching unpaid models). Then the next day they had a full day of post-production to get everything ready to present back. We said it was simple, we didn’t say it was easy…
But to our tremendous relief, what they came up with was by absolutely no means terrible. In fact, considering they had no experience whatsoever and were given unreasonably tight deadlines to turn around a lot of work, we’re sure you’ll agree that their final output was pretty damn decent. And it turns out the rumours are true: teenagers just have an instinctive understanding of TikTok.
Where do we start with Terry? Set designer, music journo, art director and multimedia artist. And when we say artist, we actually mean a proper artist. We’ve had the pleasure of working with her on a few projects, including a USC shoot for which she created 5 unique worlds to give 5 iconic brands their own bespoke moment in the sun. We also had her on a very recent shoot we absolutely cannot talk about yet but you’ll be seeing in the not-so-distant future. And when she’s not building sets for us, she’s working with some of the biggest fashion brands about, including Gucci, Calvin Klein, Lacoste, Net-A-Porter, Hypebeast, Nike and more that we won’t name purely for the sake of brevity.
Edit: Having already written this we’ve since discovered that Terry only went and did the set design for the aforementioned Apple ad above. What are the chances? It’s a Christmas miracle. Thank Christ we said we liked it.