‘Every Spring, A New Beginning’ is a commercial for german gardening and DIY store, Hornbach, designed to deliver the brand’s new Spring campaign in a funny and quirky way. Crafted almost entirely by hand to resemble the ethos behind the brand, the spot’s most distinctive and valuable elements are precisely those of filmmaking craft: bespoke props, hand-crafted sets, original costumes and unique casting.

The work was created for the German market, where both crafty solutions and gardening, or working the land, are equally as important on a cultural level. It was important for the brand and the directors that these elements were authentically embedded in the work, demonstrating to the audience that the work and the brand aligns with the values of the consumer, hence why we chose to create almost everything by hand and in the quintessential German setting.

The gardening and DIY store, HORNBACH, has a history of memorable and offbeat advertising - a legacy that the director could not ignore. To create this spring they wanted a quirky and slightly icky take on the all-too-familiar portrayal of rebirth. Emerging from a giant cocoon, our hero finds its way back to the tribe, albeit covered in slime, but ready to embrace the sunny season’s labours.

This work emerges as one of the most notably weird commercials in recent memory.”

The brief was almost as per the final film: to draw inspiration from Spring, delivering a human from its cocoon. The creatives wrote a brilliant script, exactly as they wanted to see it come to life, so the director’s challenge was to bring it to life, transforming the idea into a three dimensional world. With a craft-first approach, they defined what the cocoon would be; what the performance would look like; the methodology; the environment. All shot in camera, and made by hand, the cocoon was made to human scale, allowing our actor to break free from within.

We handcrafted 2 full scale cocoons: one acted as the hero, while the second as the stunt double. 5 further cocoon tips were made for the ‘break through’ close ups, plus 5 outer layers to practise the performance. Intentionally building a translucent, slimy shell that resembles a chrysalis, and combining references and research from many types of insects to ideate the prototype in the film. The chrysalis required the creation of a 1/10 scale maquette and a 3D-printed man in foetal position to be photographed, in order to study their form and translucency. The maquette was then blown up into two full-scale versions built by hand, for the hero to burst out of. “We wanted the build to feel organic, gooey and disgusting without pushing it too far - we didn’t want to go into horror”