Instead of Julia Roberts, we’d be casting Lancôme’s very own UK General Manager alongside her wonderful team. The purpose? To bring a touch of comedy to the brand’s annual summer conference.

With a solid reference to work from - the (at the time) unreleased commercial - we got to work organising our crew for the project and made a start on pre-production.

First and foremost, we needed access to a lift, given this is where the vast majority of the TVC takes place. Lucky for us, we could use one of the many lifts in the brand’s own head office - meaning they didn’t need to travel very far, and we didn’t need to build a custom set. Win win!

At this stage, there was just one more minor detail to figure out… The comically large pink skirt. To make things even more complicated, we also needed this to be modular, so we could detach the train for use in the bellboy scenes as a more manageable prop.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t something we could just pick up off the rack at your average high street retailer, so our incredible stylist for the project, Danielle Richardson, got to work crafting a bespoke replica. She only had a matter of days to make it happen, but took it in her stride and absolutely nailed it.

Moving onto post-production, it was important for us to ensure the final grade matched the reference as closely as possible, including the iconic pink and blue outfits, to mirror the feeling of luxury conveyed in the original commercial.

While we all had such a great time on set producing this video, the real result was seeing the client’s reaction when they watched the finished product. Our DP, Joe Unsworth, received an invitation to the conference where the film was being unveiled, and witnessing the reaction from the wider brand teams was a real treat - we don’t often get to sit and watch our work on a full-sized cinema screen in a movie theatre.

All in all, this production now stands as a best-practise case study in our portfolio, demonstrating the level of work we can produce for our clients, both on a tight-turnaround and within a limited budget.

Thank you once again to the Lancôme team for trusting us to bring this vision to life, and for allowing us to publish this work as a case study.