Ballantine / LL - Hunter and hare

Synopcis

A hunter is hunting a hare, but everything goes wrong. A glass of Ballantine’s Lager is the alternative.

Trivia

The client behind this film was a good customer. Not only was an extensive series of puppet films produced for Ballantine’s Lager, but some fine productions were also created for “Brewers Gold”. As if that weren’t enough, the brand used two brand names in different regions of the United States. In addition to the aforementioned Ballantine, the brand Light Lager was also used. This name was abbreviated to ‘LL’, and referred to the same product.

The adverts in this series always consist of four parts: a puppet animation sequence with an ending that threatens to end in disaster; followed by the supposed solution, with the logo appearing on screen. Part three is a live-action shot of the beer being poured, and finally, an animated pack shot is often shown.

As the advert always had to be produced in two versions (each with its own jingle), only the first part of the advert could be reused. Whereas nowadays the logo would be animated into the frame during video post-production, here it was done physically on the film set. This created a great deal of extra work for the studio. The nice thing is that the logo can actually be seen in the set, as evidenced by the shadow that moves with it.

In the following shot, you can see the logo, as it were, leaping through the air onto the label. Here, a live-action shot was used with a perfectly matching animated double-exposure. It’s not out of the question that this was also combined within the set, but double exposure in the film laboratory was also a widely used technique. Once all this had been achieved, the same process could be repeated with the other logo. In the ‘LL’ version, it wasn’t three rings that flew across the screen, but the letters LL moving into their respective positions.

Koos Schadee

One name that does not often appear is that of the art director Koos Schadee. He was responsible for numerous Ballantine/LL films, whilst Henk Kabos was in charge of the art direction for the “Brewers Gold” films. Various animators worked on Ballantine/LL films; Jószef Misik is regularly mentioned, but Guus Harmsen and Han Mook also frequently contributed to such productions anonymously. Han Mook was an expert in the field of camera effects.