A robbery gone awry: behind the scenes of Philips "Carousel"

Kanye West dubbed Philips “Carousel” “hands down video of the year” and Ashton Kutcher Twittered about it last weekend to his million plus followers. Boards asked director Adam Berg how the freeze-frame cinematic journey through a heist gone horribly wrong came about and shared some exclusive behind the scenes photos of the shoot as well as a behind the scenes film.

“I got a call from Mark and Daniel and Stephen from Stink about a fast moving project that had a very interesting and basic idea: Cinematic action! The agency had already discussed with Stink Digital about doing something in frozen moment and having played around with that in a previous film I saw the opportunity to take it to a whole new level. Tribal DDB, Amsterdam wanted something that involved an action scene that could work interactively. They also wanted you to come out knowing something new at the end of it.

“After throwing some ideas around with Stink Digital EP Mark Pytlik, I wrote down half an A4 sheet of paper about a robbery gone wrong and the clown robbers escaping through a hospital. Tribal didn’t shy away from something quite dark and Tribal and Philips were all behind us with the concept and the idea.

“We thought it would be great if the film worked as a loop, coming back to the start and that it would be one continuous move throughout without any cuts so that you would move through this crazy frozen world. Then it all happened rather fast and we kept developing the idea along the way.

“We went scouting in Prague to find a location that would allow us to shoot the whole thing in one place, more or less in camera. But they had an outbreak of the flu so most hospitals were closed to us. We finally found a good place to do it. It was an old school of communism which had since been turned into a sports college, we cheated that to make it look like a hospital.

“I storyboarded the film up, making it up as I went along. When people saw the boards they said, “Yes, that’s great but we have to cut it down, right?” And I said, yes of course. But the location turned out to be pretty big and we needed to fill it up with stuff, so it ended up like I boarded it.

“Then we spent a few days planning the move and explaining to everyone what was going to happen: no, nothing moves, only the camera, yes everyone will stand completely still. We cast these awesome Czech stuntguys and dancers who had good body control as our stars.

“I worked very closely with Redrum post in Stockholm to do the previz while on location and we went through it all, transforming the school to a hospital. Petr Kunc came up with set drawings in frozen mode, while Pytlik was busy on the web side of things. It was all great fun.

“Shooting happened over two long days in Prague. The effect in itself is pretty straightforward and not as complicated as one would think. I would like to say that we came up with some spectacular new piece of equipment, but we didn’t. People are just standing as still as they possibly can when we move past them. When we started shooting, it all started to make sense to everyone and when they saw what it would look like everyone got quite excited.

“We edited the whole thing on set so that Redrum could start on the post straight away and they did a great job. So did all involved.”

Check out Stink Digital’s Making of here.