This is the Christmas 2013 TV Commercial for UK Supermarket Morrisons. It aims to engage with the truth that Mums in Britain tend to exert an awful lot of effort and time in making Christmas perfect for their family. It's several weeks of hard work for one day of family joy. And the complete opposite of the perfect, fairytale picture of Christmas that other commercials portray.

The spot was shot over twelve days in a series of locations and studios around London. Featuring 22 distinctly different scenes in 90 seconds, it incorporates live-action, stop-frame animation and elaborate prop design.

Shooting in September, the production team had to achieve an authentic, barren palate of winter visuals at the wrong time of year, creating winter out of late summer.

This meant stripping away leaves from bushes and chilling exteriors to give the illusion of an authentic winter scene without resorting to clichéd visuals like fake snow or ice.

This was imperative to the film’s tone and aesthetic – it would have been unacceptable to shoot it abroad in an appropriate climate as the idea focuses wholly on depicting the nuanced truths around British Christmases. Accordingly the production team faced obstacles that had to be tackled through intelligent problem solving and resourcefulness, rather than simply throwing money at them!

True to our idea of depicting the truth about Christmas, it was decided that wherever possible, special effects and “surreal” moments would be achieved “in-camera”. To that end, 30000 Brussels Sprouts were sourced from a farmer in Europe (the British Xmas crop had not yet been harvested) before being stitched together by hand by our prop team to form the Sprout Tower, which also incorporated internal levers allowing the Directors to control the avalanche of vegetables that can be seen in shot.

The bare Christmas tree was “de-needled” by hand and then each needle tracked individually in post-production to give the effect of the needles falling off.

In the scene with the oven with 22 gas rings, the device was specially designed and constructed, with each ring equipped with an air-jet underneath it, which fired pressurized air against the underside of the pan, making the vegetables within bubble realistically whilst maintaining complete control over the process.

The Boxing-Ring Turkey sequence took over two weeks to complete. The bird itself required a separate two-day stop-frame animation shoot. All of the bird’s movements were captured by the animators and designers, before being overlaid into the live-action sequence.

Our score was composed by a Oscar-nominated composer John Debney, who composed the music in Los Angeles, before accepting notes and revisions by video conference. Again, in keeping with the film’s authenticity, the piece was recorded completely live in London by a full orchestra.