Virgin Atlantic: Time

Director Jeff Stark talks through his latest project for Virgin:

"Having done many Virgin Upper Class TV ads over the years - including ones with Terrence Stamp, Helen Mirren, Miss Piggy and Iggy Pop - I'm given a certain amount of leeway by both agency and client to introduce new techniques and visual grace notes and generally muck about with the idea.

On this occasion the agency's idea involved using one's time wisely. So we started with the idea of setting up a rhythmic tick-tock sound and shooting everything to fit that beat - overlaying slowmo and fastmo in the same shot. Daniel Bronks was the DOP, we chose him for the work on his reel which was inventive and visually intriguing - he works with Directors who like to 'play' and he clearly loves to 'play' so he was a good choice for Jeff who is part of that camp.

In the wide exterior shot, for instance, we shot some elements at 1 frame per second. Leaving the shutter open for half a second at a time means that you get lots of motion blur. I then lift this motion blur in post and overlay it on the same scene shot at, say, 75 frames per second.

I also used head replacement so that John Hannah walks in slowmo while talking at normal speed. It was a lot of fun to make and the clients, God bless them, pretty much sat back and let me get on with it."