Schhhh.... There's a new bunch of films to watch...

We heralded the return of TV and moving image in 07 – and 2008 appears to be no different with some new super strong film creative emerging already.

The Sweet Shop and Publicis Mojo are leading the charge with their new mega-project for Schweppes. The Schhh film festival will be showcasing 5 short films aimed squarely at an adult audience, exploring adult themes and the nastier elements of human nature.

The brief for the project was to reposition Schweppes as a soft drink for adults. The creative team behind the project (Nick Worthington, Karl Fleet and Tony Bradbourne) explored the uncomfortable truth that if you wanted to make ads that truly spoke to adult viewers ‘you wouldn’t be able to play them on TV’. As a result a clutch of sophisticated, creative and interesting short films were born, rather than a constrictive set of watered down TV ads.

Integrated further into the brief was the concept of the ‘schhhh moment’: a motif in the short where a character holds their fingers to their lips miming ‘schhh’ (or shhh) - this cleverly created a backbone of suspense where a TVC could be directly lifted from each short and shown on the box if needs be.

Interestingly this ‘schhhh moment’ was the only prerequisite that the series of films had to encompass. Complete creative control was handed over to the pool of talented directors and cinematographers hand picked by Sweet Shop – we think that you will agree that this mixture of client trust and freedom to create seems to have reaped brilliant results and is something that we at The Reel are celebrating with fierce gusto We can only hope that this production model will be repeated by more forward thinking and clued up brands in the near future – as confidence in your brand and creative team seems to produce innovative and spectacular results.

The 4 finished films ‘Consequence’ by Noah Marshall, ‘Finders Keepers’ by Melanie Bridge, ‘Jet Black’ by Kezia Barnett and ‘Magnifique’ by James Pilkington are all featured in the forthcoming issue of The Reel - which will be winging its way to subscribers in the next week. But never fear - if you cant wait that long for the taste of a Schhh moment - here is the snazzy trailer to whet your appetite!