Barr Soda

Project: Spiderman Collaboration
Role: DP
Client: IMA Home
Format: TVC
Camera: Sony Venice
Lighting: HMI

BARR partnered with Spider-Man: Brand New Day for a high-energy commercial promoting the chance to win a trip to New York. Set within Manchester’s industrial Depot Mayfield, the film follows a young free-runner unleashing her inner Spider-Man through a series of runs, vaults and gravity-defying camera moves. Shot on the Sony Venice with anamorphic lenses, the campaign combines practical action, dynamic handheld camerawork and in-camera rotation to bring the cinematic language of Spider-Man into BARR’s colourful, irreverent world.

Behind the Scenes

One of the commercial’s key shots was created entirely in-camera using a traditional Ronford-Baker rolling head. The camera’s 180-degree rotation had to be carefully choreographed between four people: the dolly grip tracking backwards, the focus puller maintaining focus, the camera operator controlling the rotation and composition and the actor precisely hitting each performance mark. Bringing those elements together allowed the environment to rotate naturally around the performer, creating a practical, gravity-shifting effect inspired by the visual language of Spider-Man.

The remaining sequences combined controlled movement on a traditional camera dolly with a more immediate handheld approach for the parkour action. Everything was captured using the Sony VENICE Rialto extension system, separating the compact sensor block from the camera’s larger body. This allowed the camera to be mounted and operated in much tighter positions while retaining full control and the complete image quality of the VENICE.

Viltrox EPIC 1.33x anamorphic lenses added a subtle optical character, gently referencing the anamorphic aesthetic associated with the Marvel and Spider-Man films without becoming overly stylised or losing the polished quality of a commercial. Lighting was kept relatively naturalistic, using large bounced sources to work with the scale and existing texture of the location. Most of the set was lit with HMI fixtures, chosen both for their quality of light and the output needed to shape such a large industrial environment.