Morrison directs Nexus Productions Murphy's spot For St Patrick’s Day

Sam Morrison has directed the latest Murphy’s commercial produced for St Patrick’s Day.
In the spot a hand holds an ink pen drawing, on a blank canvas, the basic outline of a bar with a Murphy’s beer tap. The hand then moves across the page and draws a stick man holding a pint of Murphy’s - which immediately brings a smile to the stick man’s face. A tagline exposing the clever pun appears at the bottom of the screen, ‘Murphy’s Fast Flow. Drawn in 26 seconds.’
Sam Morrison commented: "The Murphy's ad had to be made quite quickly. As the principle idea behind the ad was that the drawing should be fairly crude, we opted for a similar approach with the hand drawing it, going for a naive stop-motion effect.
"We shot the hand element on a digital stills camera as the hand artist followed a detailed plan of how far the hand should travel between each take - starting slowly and deliberately, then speeding up towards the end. Then with some judicious matting we created separate layers for hand, drawing (which was going to 'boil' as it appeared) and the paper itself, which had a warm quality that added to the character of the piece and reflected the creamy head of a Murphy's pint.
The three elements were then composited together and the music was added, again chosen for its "homespun' qualities!"
Nexus Productions is an independent animation production company with an internationally acclaimed roster of directing talent who produce films, TV series, commercials, music videos and title sequences.
The company was founded in 1997 by Chris O’Reilly and Charlotte Bavasso and its first commission was the creation of material for the world’s largest TV screen on U2’s ‘Pop Mart’ tour.
Since then, Nexus’s extensive credits include the multi-award winning ‘Grrr!’ commercial for Honda, the ‘Abba to Zappa’ campaign for the Observer Music Monthly, videos for Franz Ferdinand and Goldfrapp, title sequences for ‘Catch Me If You Can’ and ‘The Thunderbirds’, ’The Littlest Elf’ - the sickly sweet prelude to “Lemony Snicket’, and comedy sketches for the BBC series ‘Monkeydust’.
(SP)