Black Thistle Distillery is an independent Scottish craft distillery based in Brechin, where they produce exceptional spirits from carefully selected botanicals.

Form Digital, who are overseeing the brand’s design elements asked us to create a TV AD for the distillery. The brief was to create a 20 second TV ad that would showcase a new range of the distillery’s gins, with particular focus to be placed on the processes involved. We decided getting in to the distillery to capture the journey of the products creation would be the best way to ensure that this was achieved.

Drawing inspiration from Black Thistle Distillery’s natural surroundings, we commissioned a script to be written by Verse copywriting for the voiceover, to accompany a sequence of visuals that would highlight the process of the craft. We selected voice over artist Lisa Logan (from our previous project with black thistle), whose warm Scottish tone complements the message. From the raw ingredients to the consumers glass we tightly weaved a visual story to convey this journey. While the visual sequence was clean and polished, we wanted to try something a little different to make the video stand out. We asked our friend Rob from Studio Moger to assist. He helped us cut open the bottle using a diamond saw so that we could film a unique perspective from inside the bottle as it pours. While this is only a quick clip within the sequence, I think it adds a lot to the visual appeal of the ad.

This was a great project and was really fun to shoot. It’s always a pleasure to collaborate with scottish produce makers, especially those that are so passionate about their craft. It improves our experience immeasurably when we are granted full creative freedom, and often the results reflect this.

If you have a similar passion you would like to translate to film – get in touch.