The funny cow experience
Probably all of you know “Dr. Oetker” and their little star, cow PAULA.Even if you don’t have kids, she must have come across in the supermarket! ;)
Paula is the funny TV star of “Dr. Oetker” and she is very cool and tasty too. She presents the yummy kids yogurts and quarks of “Dr. Oetker” in Germany and Czech Republic. “Dr. Oetker” is called “Cameo” in Italy, and Paula Products are called MuuMuu, which makes sense, if you think of the sound a cow makes. ;)
So now there we are, receiving the story board of “Dr. Oetker / Cameo” in February, already dealing with many requests, but this one I liked best! It sounded of lots of fun. Which it was.
Did you ever wonder how the batches are getting into the little cups of the yogurts and quarks? Well, I did!
They look like cow batches, depending on the taste of the yogurt / quark, they appear in different colours. But how did they get there?
Well this is something we wanted to find out in the “Dr. Oetker / Cameo” shoot we were doing in March.
After a good couple of preparation days, we found the perfect location for this two days shoot, a very nice Villa in La Orotava , in the north of the island.
It has spectacular views and a very huge garden with many trees, all very green, which was quite important for Paula ;) and for the spot, of course! The weather was, as usual, sunny and warm! J
But Paula was not the only talent during the days. A couple of sweet kids, two boys and two girls, came all the way from Germany with their parents, to be able to be the main talents in this spot! As soon as you see the spot, you will agree that they were just perfect for this spot!
Shooting with kids is always fun, because you never know what happens next. ;)
Especially because we did the spoon trick, spoons hanging on thee kid’s noses, like it was magic! Actually, it was magic! Magic from our props department, preparing the spoons, so that they won’t fall off! The kids had lots of fun and so did we!
It was one location, but with two sets. One in the garden, shooting and having fun with Paula and the kids, plus the second one, where we learned how to get the batches in the mixer! And how to get the “magic hands” on the mixer too.
If you should not know it, Paula obviously is not a real cow, she is a computer animation cow, which is why we needed a special effects specialists, who prepared the mixer in a way, that it looks like having invisible hands, that were moving it. Cause this is, where Paula appears later on in the spot.
Plus we needed a special food stylist that knew how to prepare all the quark, yogurt, milk, etc. so that it looked like the perfect desert! Luckily, we had one.
The spot was for different flavours of quark and also for two different countries. One was Italy, MuuMuu from Cameo, and the other one was Czech Republic, Paula from Dr. Oetker. The flavours were:
· vanilla with chocolate
· chocolate with vanilla
· strawberry
· apricot
Whilst the kids had the “difficult” job eating the yummy deserts for the shoot in the garden, we shot the mixer and the batches on the second set.
That, by the way, sounds easier, as it actually was, but it was worth the work!
We still do not know, how to get the batches in the little cups, but at least we know, how they got in the mixer. While the food stylist and his assistant were preparing the mixers (there were a couple, just in case) with the batches, and filling it with some sort of quark-yogurt-milk mousse , the special effects guy made the mixer move as if it had hands. To get the batches disappear and melting with the rest of the product, the SFX put a little brush into the mixer, that made them melt together.
Well, just see yourself in the spot and you will agree that it actually looks like Paula is moving it! Well done!
I can secretly tell you that we were allowed to try some of the deserts too, and they were just lovely. Even for adults! ;)
It was a nice shoot, yet another interesting experience and again working with nice and very professional people!
Thanks everybody for everything and we hope to see all of them again, one day.
