Confidential
me to pitch.
My world is materials, light, and liquid. The way amber moves through glass under a probe lens. The way grain catches light differently at every scale. The way a pour carries weight before anyone says a word about it. That's where I work, and it's what I love to bring to life.
The narrative through whisky,the journey a liquid makes before it reaches the glass, the silent communication of a well-chosen bottle,is the kind of story I find most interesting to tell. Not explained. Felt.
What I read in this brief is a whisky that has been travelling for thirteen years,through three casks, three continents,and is finally arriving in front of exactly the right person. That journey is the film. My job is to make the audience feel the distance it covered without having to explain it.
in Your Hand.
Spanish Oak is afternoon light and red fabric moving across the barrel face. American Oak is a cool warehouse, hard grain, architectural shadow. Caribbean Rum is palm-shadow and falling sand, heat without weight. Each world is built from the material that shaped the liquid inside it.
Nothing is explained. The audience reads each world the way they would read a room,by the light, the texture, the way things move. The cask identity is already in the frame before anyone says a word about it.
that travels.
The swirl starts it. One ripple leaves the surface and the film moves with it,outward through each world and back. The probe lens enters the liquid, passes through, and arrives somewhere else. Three continents on a single unbroken trajectory.
The transitions are not effects. Each one is a physical match: a colour temperature, a grain resolving at a different scale, a move that continues from the last. The wave is the cut. The cut is the light.
my wheelhouse.
Glenlivet sits inside a category I know from the inside. Amber through glass under a probe lens has a behaviour, and that behaviour rewards patience. Barrel grain at macro has its own logic, its own light. The brief asks for a whisky that trusts its audience, and that trust is the part I love most. Restraint is where the work gets interesting. Not a stance, a way of looking. The slower the camera moves, the more the material has room to speak.
The materials are the thing that excites me here. Spanish oak, American oak, Caribbean rum cask, tropical fruit, each one carrying its own weather. My process starts the same way every time. List the materials, not the objects. Brushed brass and cast brass behave differently under identical light. A whole lychee and a peeled lychee each read differently against the taste tones of the whisky. That kind of specificity is where the film gets made, and it's the part of this brief I most want to get right.
Never restless.
Every move is motivated by something physical. The liquid moving, the fabric crossing the frame, the wave carrying us into the next world. Probe lenses do the close work, into the barrel grain, through the amber, out the other side to the tasting notes. Nothing happens because the camera felt like moving.
A Bolt motion-control rig anchors the longer runs. Same path twice, same path three times. The repeat passes let one shoot deliver the hero film and both cutdowns at once, and give the probe-lens transitions the precision they need to hold.
All three.
The lighting language is the connective tissue of the campaign. Not three separate setups for three separate casks. One quality of light, one direction, one temperature, running through every frame.
What changes between Spanish, American and Caribbean is composition, material, motion. What does not change is the way the light falls. That consistency is the through-line, the reason the three worlds read as one film, not three.
language.
The barrels are production-grade cooperage. Each carries the appropriate engravings. Spanish Oak Cask. American Oak Cask. Caribbean Rum Cask. They read clearly in frame without text overlays to explain them.
The tasting notes are shot on a Phantom. Lychee, pineapple, pineapple cake, sugar apple launched from a trampoline beneath frame they rise into shot, hang at the apex, undulate and interact with each other in real weightlessness, then fall again. The Phantom catches the fulcrum. No compositing. Real fruit, real physics, beautiful light.
arrives.
Lychee, pineapple, pineapple cake, sugar apple shot on a Phantom. The fruit launches from a trampoline beneath frame, rises into shot, and hangs at the apex. Weightless. Turning against each other before gravity takes them back down. The Phantom catches the fulcrum.
No compositing. Real fruit, real physics. The tasting notes made physical, with beautiful light doing the work.
Oak.
A wider scene. The flamenco dancer moves through the space, red fabric filling the frame. The camera cuts to macro slow motion detail of the dress in motion. That movement feeds directly into the liquid. The fabric becomes the pour.
Oak.
Low angle. A proud American oak barrel stands at the centre of a traditional distillery floor. The cut arrives like the space itself unhurried, architectural. Nothing performs. The barrel is enough.
Rum.
Sand begins falling through the frame, cutting in from the landscape above. As the camera pulls out, the grains fall and settle onto the face of an aged whisky barrel below. Gravity does the work.
Three cask worlds.
The packshot set is built once and lit for three distinct cask characters without a teardown. Spanish oak, American oak, Caribbean rum each world comes from the same session. The lighting is the variable.
KV, social, and mood all come out of the same rig. What we're after throughout is the table moment not a product shot, not a studio exercise. Something someone pours and doesn't have to explain.
A considered pour.
The food styling sits inside a fine dining moment a beautifully composed plate, an elegant setting, the 13YO Triple Cask as the natural companion to a considered meal. This isn't product placement. It's the occasion the whisky was made for.
Lighting, surface, and composition follow the restaurant table warm, unhurried. The kind of image that makes someone decide before they've read the menu.
Everything else built around them.
Thank you for the opportunity to pitch on this project. It would be a privilege to bring it to life. Looking forward to discussing it further.