“Ageing is not a natural process…It’s an inflammatory disease.” Dr. Nicholas Perricone definitely helped Amsterdam Worldwide make its mini-documentary for cosmeceutical brand, Perricone MD, striking.

Perricone call himself a scientific rebel. The board certified dermatologist and nutritionist who launched cosmeceutical brand, Perricone MD, knows that, “new ideas are not really well accepted in the medical…or scientific community”.

“I think to talk about health and beauty separately makes no sense at all,” provokes the cosmetic industry too.

Amsterdam Worldwide and Perricone agreed that to talk about Perricone MD without telling the story behind it made no sense at all either.

And having nurtured his agency’s expert reputation for documentary-style branded content over the years, Amsterdam Worldwide’s executive creative director, Richard Gorodecky, seized the opportunity to handle personally what is, without question, an exceptional story. Gorodecky directed the film himself and Amsterdam Worldwide handled the entire production from start to finish in-house in collaboration with Concrete Design.

The result is an aesthetically beautiful visual canvas that allows Perricone’s story, Serious About Beauty, to hold the viewer’s attention, while it subtly underlines its key points.

Gorodecky commented, “Dr. Perricone’s work is all about time, slowing or even halting its effects. So I translated the theme of time into the film using a number of techniques: The film is a single linear day, from morning to evening. The narrative flows from past, to present, to future. The film runs almost entirely in slow motion. But the most expressive techniques were the ways we played with light. Light is, after all, our most fundamental measurement of time. So we often shot directly into light sources, which is generally avoided in conventional filmmaking, and we used a technique called lens whacking that allows light to bleed into the camera behind the lens, creating beautiful flares and distortions of focus.

“Directing and producing this work in-house allowed us to work faster, more efficiently, saving our client time and money. It allowed us to remain in constant contact throughout the entire production and retain our original vision. This method of working is not right for every project, but it is certainly a great way to work on the right ones. It’s unconventional, but I think the results speak for themselves.”