Faux Absolut Vodka Ad

I have always admired the Absolut Vodka ad campaign that used to run in magazines worldwide some years ago and always thought of how I would like to try and recreate something similar. I think it is a study in simplicity embracing the "less is more" ideology while having an attention capturing visual impact. The first step was to find a current news topic that would grab attention, hence I settled on Brexit and the "hard" or indeed "absolute" nature that it entails.

Next step, purchase said product and relevant prop, in this case a bottle of vodka and a Union Jack bowtie.

I studied the lighting techniques that the original ads used and tried to "reverse engineer" it. I used three studio lights, one from behind the backdrop shooting through a snoot, and two from the front on either side of the bottle shooting through two softboxes and positioned so as to give the two reflections in the shiny bottle cap.

After metering the lights and setting up the camera I shot two photos from a sturdy tripod mount, one with only the rear light and one with only the two front lights, and then spent a little time on the computer editing and combining the two to achieve the effect I was after.

The final step was looking up which font they originally used in their campaign, download and install it and then finish off the advert with authentic Absolut punchline at the bottom.

Lighting setup pull back shots below.