Ridley Scott talks about his return to advertising after a 15-year hiatus to direct Hennessy’s four-minute brand film “The Seven Worlds,” produced thru agency DDB Paris with MPC handling the extensive VFX.

MPC creative director Ryan Jefferson Hays: “The sheer scale of the spot is immense, both in a creative aspect and from a production standpoint. The biggest challenge [was] weaving the worlds together into a singular narrative.

Behind the scenes:
 

 
MPC head of CG Carsten Keller: “Based on the agency’s concept and Ridley’s storyboard interpretations, we came up with visual references of how the campaign could look, along with technical breakdowns.

“The drawings from Ridley helped massively but it’s not the same as 3D. For example, how do you form a girl out of powder? There are a million ways of doing that. We had to come up with so many techniques in the R&D stage of how we could layer this.

“In the ‘Wood Crunches’ world, we really wanted to create something that hadn’t been seen before. We had to make a performing creature out of leaves and branches but being such an abstract concept we had to dig deep creatively-speaking.”

Client: Hennessy
Global CMO: Thomas Moradpour, Michael Aidan
Global CMO deputy: Antoine Varlet
Hennessy X.O Brand Director: Emmy Aoun Gestin

Agency: DDB° Paris
Executive Creative Director: Alexander Kalchev
Creative Directors: Pierre Mathonat, Alexis Benbehe
TV Producer: Quentin Moenne Loccoz
Managing Director: Xavier Mendiola

Production: RSA Films
Director: Ridley Scott
Managing Director: Kai-Lu Hsiung
Executive Producer: Debbie Garvey
Producer: Debbie Garvey
DOP: Dariusz Wolski
1st AD: Raymond Kirk
Production designer: Marc Homes
Costume designer: Charlotte Law
Make-up: Polly Earnshaw
Editor: Jim Weedon

VFX: MPC
MPC Head of CG: Carsten Keller
MPC Creative Director: Ryan Jefferson Hays
MPC 3D Supervisor: Boyo Frederix
MPC 2D Supervisor: Rod Norman
MPC Head of FX: Selcuk Ergen
MPC Producer: Tomek Zietkiewicz

Sound Production: Grand Central Recording Studios
Composer: Daniel Pemberton
Sound designer: Oliver Tarney
Head of Music: Jerome Alquier
Sound Mixer: Raja Sehgal

Grade: Stephen Nakamura @ Company 3
Supervising Producer: Mark Huffam

75 Paris
Managing Director: Emmanuel Guiraud
Executive Producer: Annabelle Fournier

Stillking Prague
Producer: Lida Ordnungiova