Warburtons / The Deliverers

We carried out a vast amount of work to a challenging schedule but. ‘We worked closely with Declan and WCRS throughout the process making sure each shot achieved the desired creative output’, comments VFX Supervisor Jason Watts. 'We worked on nearly every shot in detail to make sure it oozed Hollywood Blockbuster. We created the oven scene completely in 3D which required us to go to the Warburtons bread factory to shoot elements. We also replaced the heads of Sylvester Stallone’s body double in action shots and enhanced the backdrop of his office. It had to look a million dollars and sunny enough to be LA and not in a studio!’

The epic 110-second ad, starring Stallone, is the centrepiece of Warburtons major £18 million through-the-line campaign, which spans across TV, print, outdoor, PR and social media activity. Filmed in the style of a blockbuster movie trailer, the campaign highlights the extreme lengths that Warburtons go to in order to deliver over two million loaves of fresh bread to over 16,000 stores everyday through its impressive delivery network.

The tongue-in-cheek campaign is a pastiche of some of Sylvester’s most famous films, such as Rocky and The Expendables, and allows the star to showcase some great comic timing as well as some impressive muscles. In the action packed TV ad, Sly plays a baker and delivery driver and stars alongside the true heroes of the piece – Warburtons real-life delivery drivers and bakers.

Commenting on the advert, Sylvester Stallone said: ‘I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Bolton and particularly loved spending time in the bakery. Maybe I should have stopped beating up bad guys a long time ago and gone into baking instead.’

Director, Declan Lowney, comments on our work, ‘The guys at Freefolk wrapped up our Warburtons commercial very nicely. They worked hand in hand with us through the whole post-process - truly a fit like an oven-glove. Everyone at Freefolk went that extra mile and the results were anything but half-baked.’

Especially the bread scene…that couldn’t be half baked as it required us to create a fully CGI oven and bread rising. As Harin explains ‘In order to create the bread baking shot I did a lot of initial R&D studying live action timelapse footage and then replicated the different stages in CG using morphing geometry and textures. We got sent a bunch of fresh Warburtons loaves which served as great visual references for what the finished baked bread should look like. Tasty too!’

It was great to be involved in this fantastic campaign with Declan Lowney and WCRS and we’re proud to have a wealth of experience in our team which meant that we were able to provide effects that complemented the action-packed nature of this film but remain invisible.