How Ninian Doff Defeated an Evil Veggie Invasion

Vegetables are the enemy: just ask any child who's been deprived of dessert because they wouldn't eat their greens.

So, to encourage kids to eat more of the good stuff, ITV and Veg Power have launched a fantastic new campaign that casts veggies as an evil horde intent on taking over the world, and kids as the superheroes with the power to stop them. How? By chomping through as many of the blighters as they can - be that turning carrots into crudites or blitzing peppers into soup.

Created by adam&eveDDB, the integrated campaign launches today with an epic 60-second film, Eat Them To Defeat Them, directed by Ninian Doff of Pulse Films.

shots caught up with Doff to find out more about the ad's 300-inspired battle scene, getting into the world of wonky anthropomorphic veggies and how to capture the authentic sound of an evil sprout.

Ninian Doff, director, Pulse Films

What appealed to you about the script? Tell us a bit about your treatment - did you know instantly how you wanted to approach it?

The script was brilliant. As a director who loves storytelling and playing with genres it already had 3 clearly defined acts in it (evil veg coming out soil, invasion, kids fight back) so was a total dream for me. I immediately could picture it all and in fact the biggest problem I had in my treatment was totally over delivering. My initial treatment had so many ideas in it that it literally would been a 10-minute film! Fortunately, Matt [Fitch] and Mark [Lewis], the creative team at adam&eveDDB, saw my feature-length rambles on evil veg invasion as evidence I was the man for the job rather than clinically insane with no concept of time.

What films did you look to for inspiration for the horror/action-hero look and feel of the ad?

This script is a film nerd’s dream and to the terror and horror of my heads of departments, who were not working on a Hollywood movie budget, I kept casually referencing enormously expensive blockbusters to them in my briefs!

Although upfront plays with horror gags the references were quite diverse: Jurassic Park for some lighting, the perfect zombie-hand-bursting-from-grave is actually in Kill Bill, a lot of animations also do great cinematic horror. I kept referring to this section as 'Spielberg Horror' - by that, I meant all the fun of horror tropes but with that slightly glossy, magical feel to make it still fun for kids.

"The epic veg battle is directly influenced by the ludicrous battle scene in 300... All in all, I’d say that totals the equivalent of about a billion dollars’ worth of movie references."

BTS image: Reece Gibbins

Then the sprouts in the car was actually a scene I added to the script as I wanted a sort of “patient zero” scene of day one of the invasion. Here I was looking a lot at the beginning of World War Z for tone and lighting. Then the epic veg battle is directly influenced by the ludicrous battle scene in 300. Finally we end in a hybrid of Edgar Wright and Michael Bay during the heroic kids' scenes, with a bit of superhero movies thrown in there too.

All in all, I’d say that totals up to the equivalent of about a billion dollars’ worth of movie references! But despite us not having quite that much money, I have to say my team at Pulse Films and key HoDs pulled it out the bag and somehow incorporated all these influences into the final film!

How did you go about giving (evil) personalities to the veggies?

The script was very open as to how the evil veg moved and were represented on screen and so a key approach I bought was the rule that the veg had to be totally real. I just felt if they were puppets, or even animated, then the vegetables on kids' plates wouldn’t be the same ones that you have to defeat. It’s crucial that we’re saying the actual broccoli on your plate is also an evil baddy and you have to eat it to defeat it.

"We did enhance some [of the vegetables] but, for example, the evil sprout and the shocked pepper 100% naturally grew exactly like that."

So for that reason I got really into wonky vegetables that had naturally grown to have anthropomorphic evil faces. Myself and production designer Tim Gibson spent a lot of time in the world of organic veg working out what had the funniest faces. We did enhance some but, for example, the evil sprout and the shocked pepper 100% naturally grew exactly like that.

Then the next step in creating personality was in the sound design. I never have them speak a language but they all have amazing voices, of which everyone in the sound session had a go on the mic trying to get the perfect gasping cauliflower or menacing sprout noise!

The epic slow-mo battle between the parents and the vegetables is a particular highlight that definitely merits re-watching, tell us a bit about how that was achieved?

I make very detailed animatics for all my jobs and this was always blocked out as a one take, as I knew how packed this 60-second spot was so it felt important not to be too “cutty” the whole time and have some breathing space. I then stole... sorry, referenced, the time ramp technique from 300 to make an epic yet totally daft vegetable battle! The actual in-camera shot on the day was beautiful (shout out to our great DP Patrick Meller) but the scene, and many others, was then made even more epic with fantastic post work from nineteentwenty who went above and beyond to make the spot as good as it possibly could.

BTS image: Reece Gibbins

Casting was obviously important as the child characters have to appeal/seem aspirational to other kids as well as adults - how did you approach casting?

I’ve done a lot of films, music videos and commercials now with young casts and I always find it really fun working with them. Kharmel Cochrane was our casting director and helped get lots of great kids in the room. The great thing here was the idea is so immediate that the casting session was really easy for kids coming along. Every kid who came into the casting got to violently snap carrots in two as they delivered badass one-liners for me!

In the end, it was an interesting realisation that the lines had to be quite “performed.” Normally I’d always want a child actor to be as understated as possible but since they’re in a fake movie here, delivering cool action hero one-liners, it worked best when they really went for it with the lines. Then Emma Jayne Lipop - our costume designer - did a great job of styling the kids so they had that iconic movie hero look for their final shot, but still felt real and not contrived.

The sound design is spot-on, particularly in setting the scary tone at the start of the ad - how closely did you work with String & Tins to achieve this?

String & Tins came on board early on with Adam Smyth at the helm. They’re always so good and once again on this project put in so much energy, ideas and passion. The sound design in this is so much more involved than you’d normally get in one spot as we go through so many genres. Sound and music was also vital in keep this flowing as one piece. There was a danger of it jarring as it so quickly moved into different movie styles and it was in the sound mix that it all was really brought together into one piece.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget seeing how 'method' Will [Cohen] from String & Tins got in trying to capture the voice of an evil sprout - he sort of ballooned his body up, hunched his shoulders and curled inward so that he truly became spherical like a sprout and sure enough, nailed the perfect evil “yoo hoo!” It was a pretty special thing to witness.

BTS image: Reece Gibbins

What were the biggest challenges, technical or otherwise, for you?

The biggest challenge in pre-production was working out how to tell this huge sweeping narrative succinctly in 60 seconds and shoot it all in two days! On making this impossible task happen, I have to give a huge shout out to producer Ellie Fry and 1st AD James Sharpe. The morning of the one-take battle scene it was obviously a bit scary, but it actually came together very quickly and I think it’s take three in the edit as opposed to take 68 which is everyone's fear when setting up for an ambitious long single one take shot!

In the edit the challenge was to get the pace right and where to give the tiny bits of air in such a dense piece. Mark Edinoff at Work did a great job packing in the jokes and yet making it still be watchable. He’s also the voice of the screaming corn, which never fails to please me every time I watch it.

And the most rewarding aspect?

I think everyone at some point has had the unfortunate experience of amazing scripts getting watered down and their magic lost in the process of them getting made, and what was so fantastic with this job was the strong consistent message from the client and the agency to never hold back and to always be bold. Everyone quite rightly realised that if you want kids to actually pay attention you can’t play it safe. So without a doubt the most rewarding part was to be working with a team where the creative idea was so protected and everyone, in all roles, was pushing for this to be the best version possible.