BETC Creatives on Bringing Baby Bay to Life

The creative team behind BETC Paris' latest campaign spot for evian mineral water, Valérie Chidlovsky and Agnes Cavard, talk about the challenges of directing 6-9-month-old babies on a beach and how they came up with a strong creative concept to continue evian's Live Young theme.

What was the brief that Evian approached you with?

The brief from evian was to bring the product back to the heart of the campaign and talk more about the evian effect.

Apart from the previous spots in the series, what was the inspiration for the concept of this campaign?

We took departure in the brief and saw it as a challenge to reinvent the genre and do something more focussed on storytelling. After that, it’s all about feeling. We just tried to imagine what we would have liked to watch online or on TV.

Tell us about the baby surfers and the characters you created…

Actually, it’s not real babies, but adults who have had evian - a symbolic transformation of course, as the evian water helps us live young and keep in touch with our inner baby.

Our baby surfers are cool and stylish girls and boys who love vintage, music, traveling, fun and friendship. They’re fresh, spontaneous and innocent like all babies and they always will be.

On a more serious note, 16 babies are competing for attention in the film, doing acrobatic surfing or playing music. They were all South African, aged 6-9 months, at the time of the filming. They’ve since learned how to walk but not how to surf yet.

Humour features heavily in this campaign. Why do you think this genre works so well?

In our case, it’s a somewhat particular sense of humour, paradoxically based on certain realism without the typical silly jokes. Otherwise, the advertising format easily lends itself to a funny story that people want to share and that gives a friendly image of the brand. Thanks to the internet it’s super-efficient. Everyone likes a good laugh, right?

Tell us about the production process and what it was like working with lots of babies?

The Baby Bay video was produced by Wanda Paris, in collaboration with Mikros Image for post production and special effects. Most scenes were filmed on the beach with babies and some scenes were shot in the studio for post purposes. Filming lasted for a week and the overall production time was around four months.

When you're filming with babies, it's impossible to get a perfect shot of several all doing something at once. You have to do a sort of multi-layer shoot with each take focussed on a particular baby, then the post production team collates the various shots to make it seem as if they were all filmed simultaneously. We also used motion control to get the movements perfect when replicated.

We were filming babies aged 6-9 months doing things they can't physically do. They couldn't even walk! Our technique was to film the babies and get the perfect facial expressions, then rework the body movement using 3D technology.

And how did you choose what they looked like?

The casting and shoot were supervised by a South African agency who specialise in filming with infants. During the casting process they provided advice about the babies’ ‘acting’ ability and how shy or expressive they were in front of the camera. During filming, the same team had a plethora of tricks and techniques to get the babies' attention, generate facial expressions and find the right body position.

The team was also responsible for ensuring the babies were properly looked after with a dressing room on set, keeping them under a parasol between takes, hydrating, feeding and with regular naptimes, of course. It's always funny to see a team of 80 technicians patiently waiting for a baby to wake up from a nap…

You can only film babies for a very short time and on top of that the weather conditions on the beach were a bit tricky with a lot of wind. So when the calmer moments coincided with the little stars’ nap-time we had to adapt quickly, sometimes changing the characters. We had a little girl with the most adorable mini-Ugg boots but we didn’t get a chance to film her, such a disappointment!

Why was James Rouse the right director for the project?

We chose him for his creative sensitivity and ability to tell stories and work with actors. We loved James’ films for Harvey Nichols. Finesse, humour, style – just perfect. We were extremely happy when he liked the story and wanted to work with us.

James intervened in the storytelling, he’s really sensitive to details. He didn’t want the film to be too funny, and he was right. He is extremely precise in his way of directing the actors and even directed the babies as real actors, with the same incredible care for detail. It was an amazing collaboration and friendship.

What challenges did you encounter in order to create a sense of continuity in narrative and style?

The films have a youthful spirit in common. The story of the babies will continue to evolve and surprise us – without changing too much at the same time. We feel very free with the creative.

Do you feel it could ever be at risk of becoming outdated or do you feel that it perfectly aligns with the brand and has evolved successfully over time? 

It’s a real question of course, and it’s hard to answer. It’s like stopping a series and starting a different one. One could even imagine the babies disappearing to then come back, even better. Everything is possible, except being cheesy or boring!