The pause is the point.

A bottle and a city, and a minute between them.Coca-Cola — Out-of-home, print, late summer 2024.

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The brief, in full

There is a minute between the day ending and the night beginning. The bar is wiping the rim of the glass. The neon outside has just blinked on. The street is briefly empty. We made the campaign for that minute — and for the bottle that fits inside it.

Brief approved by client · 11.04.2024

The room knows first

We didn’t dress the bar. We waited for the bar to dress itself — for the neon to settle, for the wood to remember the day’s glasses, for one stool to look more empty than the others.

Coca-Cola bottle alone on a polished bar at closing time, neon trace on the wood — The room knows first.PL · 01

The empty bar interior — Coca-Cola neon, a row of red stools, one bottle on the counter — The neon keeps the oath.PL · 02

A single red bar stool beside a marble table edge, neon Coca-Cola reflecting on the surface — The pause leaves a mark.PL · 03

III

Twelve seconds of cold

The bottle was held at four degrees Celsius. Above that, the condensation runs. Below it, the glass fogs and the label hides. We had twelve seconds per take.

Macro of the Coca-Cola bottle — condensation, the curve of the cap, neon glow — Cold has a sound.PL · 04

Tight macro of the bottle's shoulder — beaded condensation catching red light — Beaded at four degrees.PL · 05

An empty glass with a melting ice cube, a red ribbon of neon on the floor — What's left in the glass.PL · 06

And the pour was the whole minute.

Shot in one take, on a 100mm macro. Forty-one tries. Take 38 was the one that ran clean. We left the others on the floor.

Take 38.PL · 07

Plate — Palette

Eleven reds. Two are real. Nine are a neon sign at varying distances from a bottle.

Pantone 485 C — base

+ neon halo, gel-warmed

+ surface bleed on lacquered wood

The campaign's eleven-step red palette beside a study of neon-light blocks — PL · 08

How it was made

Every droplet on the bottle was placed by hand with a fine brush. The bar was lit with three lights and twenty-eight pieces of black wrap. The neon sign is real, dimmed to 38%.

The studio set — bar, stand-mounted lights, scrim, camera tripod — The set, before everyone arrived.

Camera operator's monitor showing the bottle composition; lens, notebook — Frame check, monitor right.

A pair of hands placing condensation droplets on the bottle by hand — Every drop of condensation, by hand.

Reference polaroids spread on a granite surface beside a spritz bottle and gloves — Reference polaroids, wrong takes face down.

Typography study — a Fraunces 'aH' set against a vertical band of red light — PL · 09

Plate — Type

We set aH for an hour.

Fraunces, opsz 96, italic. The ‘a’ is the bottle. The ‘H’ is the horizon line behind it. The pause is mostly silence.

VII

Plate — Grain

Shot on film. Scanned at 8K. Aged on paper.

Kodak Portra 400, push one stop. We added the grain back at the print stage; nothing is laid in digitally.

Film-grain study — five swatches with a single red light vignette — PL · 10

VIII

The placement

11×4

metres, billboard

placements

cities

minute, repeated

Lisbon, Porto, Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, Milan. Eight weeks. A single unbranded launch night per city — the bar in the photograph, the bottle on the bar, the sign on. The placements went up the next morning.

— end of reel —

The pause is the point.