Coop Bio-Milch im Glas

Project Overview

This commercial promotional short film was created for Coop to announce the re-introduction of traditional, reusable glass milk bottles across their retail stores. The objective was to raise awareness for the brand’s new sustainability initiative by visually communicating the cyclical nature of the product’s life cycle.

The Journey Framework

The narrative structure was inspired by cinematic ensemble films that follow a single object as it changes hands over time. The movie I had in mind is “Twenty Bucks” from 1993. The camera tracks a single glass bottle through its circular lifecycle: starting in a consumer’s kitchen, traveling back to the store drop-off, moving through the industrial washing and refilling plant, and ultimately returning right back to the protagonist’s home.

Motivated Practical Lighting

To anchor the modern product launch in a sense of history and heritage, I used a traditional filament lamp as the primary key light for the kitchen scenes. This choice established a warm, nostalgic aesthetic that reminded viewers of traditional quality. In contrast, the industrial facility was filmed using available ambient light to maintain an authentic, documentary-style reality for the production phase of the journey.

High-Velocity Factory Shooting

Filming the industrial manufacturing segments presented significant logistical hurdles, as the newly installed automated machinery was unvetted and frequently malfunctioned on set. Executing the shot list required absolute adaptability and speed; the production dynamic became a matter of waiting for brief operational windows and filming rapidly to secure the necessary coverage before the next mechanical breakdown occurred.

Interdisciplinary Collaboration

I insisted on a new collaborative workflow for the team to elevate the visual polish of the domestic environments by bringing our in-house products photographer on set as set designer for the kitchen scenes. This synergy between internal creative assets allowed us to meticulously curate the frames and maximize production value from within the organization.