12-15-2023 - Case Study
Video: Behind the scenes of Coca Cola's holiday short, shot on the VENICE 2
By: SonyCine Team
The world needs more Santas.
That's the message Coca‑Cola is sending in their latest Christmas campaign dubbed, "The Santa Stories."
"The Santa Stories"
For nearly a century, the Coca-Cola Company has employed brilliant marketing, wielding the magic of the rosy-cheeked Ol’ Saint Nick to weave Coke into the very fabric of Christmas.
And while kindness has always been a central theme to those holiday campaigns, this years, The Santa Stories, delivers that message in a new, much more cinematic vehicle. The Santa Stories are a pair of star-studded short films that the brand is hoping will spread even more 'real magic' this holiday season.
Both short films area available to stream on Prime Video and Freevee.
To produce the short films, Coca‑Cola tapped award-winning Creed II director and screenwriter, Steven Caple Jr. and Universal’s Jurassic World franchise actor and director Bryce Dallas Howard, to bring cinematic quality to the feature films, which showcase the power of embracing the “inner Santa” in all of us through acts of kindness, generosity and goodwill.
‘Ho Ho Heist,’ which was shot on the Sony VENICE 2 by Director of Photography Steven Holleran, marks the first episode of the anthology. Directed by Steven Caple Jr, the heist-thriller follows Santa Claus as he lands behind bars on Christmas Eve. Detective Grinchauser, played by Octavia Spencer, interrogates Santa about a robbery orchestrated by a group of thieves disguised as him. To rescue Christmas for millions of children worldwide, Nate, a criminal played by Scoot McNairy, must bust the real Santa out of jail.
Inside 'Ho Ho Heist'
Director of Photography Steven Holleran (Missing, Sympathy for the Devil) sat down with Sony Cine to take us behind the scenes of 'Ho Ho Heist.'
"We wanted something vintage. We wanted something that felt like a postcard and that led us to look into lenses that had a softer look, that had a lower contrast and was made up of glass from the 60s and 70s," explains Holleran.
Holleran paired the custom glass from Panavision with the Sony VENICE 2 to create a whimsical look.
The Santa Stories can be streamed on Prime Video and Freevee.
