Competition in the Film Craft category of the One Show is ferocious. And yet the team on Tiger Beer’s Wok were rewarded. Just 3 Pencils were awarded in Editing. Wok was one of them.
Andrew Holmes, editor at Heckler, commented, “Being rewarded for something I love doing is just the icing on the cake. Even after 15 years in the film industry, I still get excited everyday. I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of Heckler from the beginning. It’s been mind blowing to see how quickly a band of passionate disruptors has established a respected name and solid track record in the post production industry.”
Of course, the win was bittersweet. It turned out to be Droga5’s swansong. But the client followed Droga5 Australia’s creative chairman, David Nobay, to Marcel Australia, and Tiger Beer became the new agency’s founding global client.
“The Tiger Beer team was a real partnership between client and creative,” Holmes noted.
“There was a strong sense of trust from Tiger and it helped to have a relationship built on a really strong foundation by Nobby. The original concept developed by Nobby was very strong. I loved the idea of linking Tiger Beer back to the heat, energy and passion of the Asian hawker street markets, as well as honouring the universal symbol of Asian cuisine – the simple wok.”
Tiger Beer is no longer a local Asian brand. It’s owned by Heineken, a Dutch company. Its Asian DNA is no longer a given. The job of the new global campaign, that launched in Australia before its run began in Asia, was to re-establish Tiger’s Asian credentials. To do that, the ad had to also stand out in a crowd of noisy competitors. The wok is a dominant symbol of Asian food and culture. And beer is intrinsically linked to Asian food. The rest of the equation, that resulted in a One Show Pencil, was creative thinking married with production and post production expertise.
Andrew Holmes accepts his award
Holmes explained, “It was important for the director and me to transform the viewer’s experience. We wanted the viewer to feel the energy of the street, to experience the rich colours, to smell and taste the hawker street food. We wanted to take the humble wok from the streets to somewhere a bit more magical.
“The edit was always shifting and changing, until a groove was found and a truly spectacular film was created. The editing process took around 6 weeks to complete. There were 3 cinema cameras used during 10 days of filming across 3 countries. So there was around 70 hours of incredible footage to look through to find those golden moments.
“If I’m doing my job, the viewer should become so engaged in the story and the images on the screen that my involvement is invisible.”
Holmes must have done his job. Even before the One Show winners were announced, Nobby had asked him to work on Art Breaks, the project that would launch his new agency, Marcel Australia.
“Artbreaks was like no other project I’ve worked on,” Holmes commented. “There was no agency, no client and no brief. It was an awesome opportunity to work closely with different directors. It was a really interesting process, which at times felt like an art experiment, collaborating and exploring ideas and developing visual narratives that would work across this unique series of films.”
Like most production companies, Heckler has been navigating a changing production environment.
“Heckler is always striving to do the best work,” Holmes stated. “Budgets and deadlines are always being squeezed, but we’re always evolving and finding new ways to approach our craft. But we’ve had an awesome start to 2016 and I can’t wait to see what’s in store around the corner.
“Both Tiger Beer and Artbreaks have been entered into the Cannes Festival this year. Fingers crossed a trip to the French Riviera is in my future.”
l-r: Will Alexander, David Nobay, Andrew Holmes, Mark Simpson
