Windmill Lane

Project Details

Strongbow Hero

• Director: Des Mullan

Windmill Lane was chosen to work on the new worldwide campaign for Strongbow Cider. This prestigious campaign, commissioned by Heineken International in Amsterdam will be breaking in multiple territories around the world over the next few months.

Written by Mike Mesbur of Y & R Dublin, directed by Des Mullan of Max Films, the commercial takes us into an epic world of myth and fantasy, where a vast army of archers gather in a parched desert, surrounding a lush walled orchard. As the storm of arrows they release hits the orchard, the fruit is transformed into barrels of thirst quenching apple juice, blending seamlessly into beautiful super slo mo cider shots.

The commercial was filmed in various locations in South Africa, with some amazing high speed Phantom material of apples being destroyed by real arrows, and stunning close up high speed product photography. Ian Jacobs supervised the shoot in SA from a post-production perspective.

The team in commercials VFX, Richard Merrigan, Fred Burdy and Eric Dolan in 3D, and VFX supervisor and lead Flame Ian Jacobs, then added an entirely CG orchard into the desert landscape, a hail of arrows from the army, and created the storm of apple destruction in the orchard with multiple layers of apple hits and arrows.

The team in Dublin also collaborated with BUF, Paris on the creation of the army of archers, 200 of which were shot on location as foreground featured army, and then the ranks were swelled by character duplication software. The audio was mixed by Locky Butler in Slate.