Let’s do this for real… The Woodshed’s Brad Sayers on Filming the Unexpected for Hydralyte

Production company The Woodshed recently partnered with agency Five By Five Global and Care Pharmaceuticals to bring their “Drench Your Thirst” campaign for Hydralyte to life. Brad Sayers, director and owner of The Woodshed, shares his thoughts on process, and filming the absurd.

Hydralyte is such a trusted brand, so when we were approached by Five By Five Global to bring this project to life, maintaining and building on that trust was crucial. Five By Five Global’s creative was beautifully simple, didn’t take itself too seriously, demonstrated the product (in metaphor), communicated it visually, and was absurdly unexpected.

Even in advertising, there’s an unspoken contract with your audience. If you want them to watch, entertain them. Entertain them by showing them something familiar but unexpected, and your audience will happily adhere to that contract. It’s this familiarity, the expectation, that both satiates and reassures.

The evolution of TVC and content production, as the pressure to deliver with smaller budgets and tighter timelines, in every format imaginable, has meant that we’re perpetually refining our process. Working with universally skilled individuals who comfortably use multiple skill sets is crucial to our process at The Woodshed.

We’re filmmakers at heart, and finding more efficient ways of doing things is part of that creative process. I tend to look at the whole, and how every aspect fits into that solution, from fulfilling creative communication to cost and time. Responding quickly to adjustments in pre and post-production has become an invaluable part of building trust with agencies both strengthening the outcome and our relationship. I feel it’s this combination of universal skill sets and whole-project thinking, that truly adds value to The Woodshed’s offering, and has been vital in navigating the pressures that agencies and clients are under to deliver.

If you’ve delivered projects in a certain genre, inevitably you’re going to be asked to do that again. But as Directors we’re perpetually looking beyond the horizon, so it’s often delivering something we’ve never done before – a unique concept with challenging time and budget restraints – that true originality is realised. And not only through using new technology, or refining performance moments, but something more fundamental, that may shift film syntax entirely.

Capturing moments in camera is the best approach when trying to maintain a sense of reality. But when using physical effects, re-set times can be a burden, especially with water. On Hydralyte Drench Your Thirst, no visual effects were used. Actors performed their own “stunts” using warm water, and after extensive testing in pre-production we used shallow water catchments and simple sets, allowing for fast re-set times.

An audience can tell when something has been done for real. Whether it be conscious or subconscious, people are very familiar with how visual effects work and look, so on this project it was crucial to not only create believable sets and credible sound design, but have our water effects interact perfectly with our characters and their environments.

Establishing an atmosphere of seemingly benign familiarity, hitting the audience with the unexpected, then introducing music to reinforce emotional intent – playful absurdity – was crucial to this spot’s narrative effectiveness. This visual metaphor is strong enough to be highly effective in the digital realm too.

In this spot for Hydralyte, we wanted to establish a familiar reality, then tilt it sideways in one blinding hit. This kind of unpredictability is a narrative device that I know and love, and Five By Five Global’s Drench Your Thirst uses it perfectly. It really was such a pleasure bringing this series to life for Hydralyte.

Hydralyte’s Drench Your Thirst campaign rolls out in cinemas, BVOD and social from the 1st of October.

Client – Hydralyte
Agency – Five by Five Global
Production Company – The Woodshed
Director – Brad Sayers
Producer – Christine Tan
DOP – Tony Luu
1st AC – Anthony Pawley
2nd AC – Chris Whaite
Camera Attachment – Aryan Gorasia
D2 Motion Tech – Daniel Miller
Gaffer – Miles Jones
Best Person – GuangHui Chuan
Grip – Mark Abrahams
Stylist – Lydia Saunders
Props Buyer – Steve Tomic
Art Assist – Toby Tomic
Stand By – Ben Walker
H&M – Stephanie Cainero
SFX Supervisor – Dave Trethewey
SFX Tech – Lewis Williams
SFX Assist – Bradley Matthews
Nurse – Jalna Horn
Production Runner – Toby Meredith Jones
Production Assist – Emma Dewar
Catering – Two Can Do
Studio – D1 Studios
Edit – Brad Sayers
Grade – Matt Campbell
GFX – Carve & Stitch
Sound Design – Justin Flynn
Kitchen Dad – James Knight
Kitchen Daughter – August Wooldridge
Tradie – Taulima Tautai
Office Worker – Rachel Chung
Office Background – Adam Smart