Head & Shoulders were running a campaign filmed with Claudia Winkleman where they released a new product for April Fool’s Day. This product was a play on their traditional branding called “Knees and Toes”. They wanted the video in 9×16 and 4×5 for their social accounts, and provided us with the green screen footage of Claudia doing a few takes. My goal was to create a script from what she said and produce a short video showing off the product that would be amusing and engaging for viewers.

I began by cutting Claudia out from the green screen in After Effects, which was no easy task given her famously long hair, which was difficult to get fine cuts from. Once she was removed from that (with a combination of Keylight, Key Cleaner, and Advanced Spill Suppressor), I added in a new background. We went with a news broadcasting room to represent the video being an announcement.

After that, I cut up the three takes and produced a few written scripts based on what she said, tightening them up where possible. Sometimes I would need her to cut words out mid-sentence, which could be tricky, so I used some cuts with zooms so it didn’t jerk too badly to the next word.

One of the hardest parts was editing the label onto the bottle, as the camera had blown out the real bottle she was holding, so it needed replacing. I used the tracker in After Effects to follow the bottle and copy the movement to a null object, which I then parented my image of the label to.