As romantic moments on celluloid go, Nora Ephron's got nothing on Traktor. With creative through BBH, New York, the Swedish duo's latest for Axe begins with a couple sharing a loving gaze from the peak of a vertiginous hilltop. When the woman leans in for a smooch, they lose their balance and roll downwards on a dizzying journey that sends them over a hillside, through a picnic, across an oily garage, over a tomato field, across a highway, over a cliffside and into the ocean, from which they wash ashore.

While a cartoonish spot in typical Axe fashion, "Rolling" was also fairly demanding from a production services standpoint. According to co-director Ole Sanders, it was Traktor's need for "glorious vistas and good weather" as well as "a wide variety of locations that were not too archaic to permit" that ultimately led them to settle on Cape Town, South Africa, where they enlisted the local mainstays at Africa Film Services for production support. "They needed a cliff, a road on a cliff, a beautiful beach, a very green area for the tomato plants, a parking lot, and a garage for the mechanic scene, but the most important and most difficult location was the opening shot, which was the vista of them sitting and looking out at the ocean," says AFS executive producer Dale Kushner. "We knew Signal Hill would be the ideal location for that, and it was."

Location scouting wasn't the only challenge AFS faced during the production. In addition to sourcing stunt people to fill in for some of the more physically demanding scenes, they were also tasked with finding a way to provide a bird's-eye perspective of the tumbling lovers. For that, they devised what Kushner calls a 'rollover rig'. "Basically we strapped the actors into this machine that we had made with a camera on it," he laughs. "It was like putting three people on a spit barbeque and rolling them around."

With the exception of three actors cast in America and Argentina and a handful of production principles, the cast and crew for "Rolling" was supplied entirely by AFS. Although they'd never worked together before, Sanders has nothing but complimentary things to say about the experience. "We can say without talking Afrikaans that AFS were incredibly focused," he says. "Dale has a way of being completely buttoned up and in charge while seemingly only caring about the quality of the lunch. He even broke out his own private stash of chutney, which confused many."

As for the city itself? "A complete joy," according to Sanders. "Cape Town is very production-friendly," he says. "We had our own chaperone/driver who mastered the intricacies of [co-director] Sam's complicated laundry demands and stain-removal needs while still knowing exactly which radio-frequencies would give crackle-free reception for our iTrip in the car. Not an easy task!"

Bartle Bogle Hegarty http://www.bartleboglehegarty.com
Traktor http://www.traktor.com
Africa Film Services http://www.africafilmservices.com