Rexona Stunt City

It’s the beginning of a crazy day in Sydney Australia. Stuntmen are on the way to work. Two drivers pass each other each taking the corners on two wheels. Our hero, looking out from his apartment balcony, finishes his coffee and walks inside to get ready for the day. He smashes a hole in the mirror of the bathroom cabinet, takes out his Rexona Sure Men and sprays. And then it’s over the edge of the balcony and on to the roof of a bus.

Briefcase in hand he greets the other passengers. A Stunt City policeman slides into the cafe to get his takeaway coffee. As he drives off a cyclist smashes into his side and catapults over the top. Another stuntman runs through a display window to hail a taxi which he rides on the outside of course. A courier on motorbike passes an on-fire newspaper reader and smashes through the windows of a bank. Finally our man glides past his office suspended from a helicopter. He drops through the ceiling to take his place at the boardroom table. After all that, the coffee’s too hot. The encouragement from Rexona? “Over the top protection for under the arms – it won’t let you down.” Click on the image below to play the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_C_WhCPNtE

Released on television screens on May 2, 2005, the ad won a Gold Lion at Cannes in June.

Rexona has a German website featuring Stunt City. The Stunt City concept was taken another step in Berlin in June with a giant chalk 3D effect painting in Potsdamer Place (pictured below).

The American version of this advertisement was aired at the XL Super Bowl in February 2006, featuring ‘Degree For Men’.

Credits

The ad was created by advertising agency Lowe, London, whose team included creative director Ed Morris, creatives Simon Butler and Geoff Smith, and TV producer Charles Crisp.

‘Stunt City’ was directed by Ivan Zacharias, with production company Stink, London, with producer Nick Landon, director of photography Jan Velicky and editor Filip Malasek at Robota.

Stunt City was filmed in the Rocks district of Sydney.

Stunt work was supported by Guy Norris of The Stunt Agency in Sydney, well known for his work with the Mad Max movies, Bulletproof Monk, Moulin Rouge and Red Planet. Local production work, including talent recruitment and negotiation with Sydney authorities, was done by Doll. The music soundtrack is “Quiero Un Mambo” by Xavier Cugat.

Post production was carried out at The Mill, London. Producer was Helen Weil, lead flame was Barnsley, with flame artists Adam Grint and Richard Betts.

From The Mill’s site:

The Mill’s Barnsley spent two weeks with the shoot in Australia working closely with the production and making sure that post could help that happen. Much of the later Flame work involved clean-up and de-rigging; removing safely harnesses and padding from the stunt men, painting out the grips who’d had to push a car over on its roof at a certain point and so on. “All in all we spent about a week and a half on it in post and almost every shot had to have something done to it,” said Barnsley. “Some elements were retimed to choreograph better with the other stunts going on around them, while we also had to retime for continuity in the edit. In some scenes it would have been too dangerous to have three stunts going on all at once, so they filmed them separately and I put it altogether in Flame.”