Celebrity Cruises: Journey WonderFULL
Overview
We’ve been partnering with our dear friends over at Celebrity Cruises since 2016, creating hours of high-end content announcing the multibillion-dollar EDGE class of ships. These brand films drove record numbers of bookings and helped build sustained hype for ships that Time Magazine have consistently labeled as some of the best places to be in the world.
We were again tapped directly by the brand for a major undertaking. Celebrity BEYOND, the third ship in the EDGE class, launched in Europe in April of 2022, and the brand needed to capitalize on the time between completion and revenue sailings to capture a library of lifestyle large enough to drive broadcast spots, online videos, and everything in between.
Process
This was a producing Mount Everest and showcased our logistics operations at the heigh of their powers. We were tasked with shipping 50+ cast and crew members, plus 100+ bags of equipment, props, and wardrobe, across the Atlantic from Miami to Paris. From there, we all had to be bussed 5 hours to St. Nazaire, the coastal town where the ship was being built. Because we were still in the height of COVID sensitivity for the cruise industry, all of us immediately quarantined in our (amazing) cabins for 24 hours, with the possibility of losing any cast, crew, or client to further quarantine.
And much like before any grand opening, there is always a scramble to put every detail in place. It was in this environment, with the ship being urgently finalized all around us, that we were tasked with shooting amazing lifestyle footage that encapsulated the new direction of the brand. We needed to shoot everywhere on the ship, to boot, and construction timelines were constantly shifting. We shot for 10 days, playing schedule Tetris every night while responding to the changing circumstances.
The production team executed a gauntlet of last-second schedule changes, shifting ship positions, and navigating a film crew through a sensitive space prior to it’s grand opening- without interfering with any of Celebrity’s preparation.
Our creative approach was grounded in creating a first-person experience that felt immediate and not produced and artificial. We freely mixed in literal POV shots with cinematic handheld moments and sweeping architectural shots. The result is work that conveyed the scope of the ship and the intimacy of the experience in the same breath.
This was an exciting opportunity to break apart our approach to lifestyle. We focused on creating experiential and sensory shots with realistic human performances and thinking about camera in a way that was intentional rather than generic. We were also responsible for post-production. One of our largest contributions to the entire campaign was in selecting the music, which captures everything the brand was trying to convey while feeling like a top-40 hit without the budget-busting licensing fee. The song became the anthem uniting all their brand work.
A task of this level of ambition requires extraordinary expertise. We applied our experience with moving targets, sensitive spaces, and scheduling Origami, along with our thoughtful approach lifestyle aesthetics, to create something that not only supported the brand’s goals but pushed it into new and unexpected directions.
Results
This project produced a library of footage, for immediate use in broadcast TV spots that are currently airing and played in the FIFA World Cup as well as in smaller assets across all media channels.
Artex was responsible for the production and post-production of the spot.
We look forward to further voyages with our longtime partners soon.
