Square

2021

This is a brand film for Square. But ultimately, it is a love letter to one of the most beloved and hardest hit industries of the last year: the service industry.

Pre-Production

Real restaurants and the people who work there, that was the focus here.

Showing their love and commitment to the food and their communities, and finding hope and inspiration from authentic stories in a spot that will live on beyond the pandemic. A celebration of the passion and perseverance that has enabled them to survive through a once-in-a-century crisis.

Documentary This

When we started this, all we had was an idea. There was no script, and we didn’t want to put words in people’s mouths.

So we worked like a documentary crew, capturing all the footage we could through scads of interviews and still photography—not knowing exactly what kind of story would come together, but trusting that it would emerge through their shared experience.

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As the (COVID-safe) production company on the shoot, BUCK did everything from scouting locations to the sound mix.

From interviews to experimental stop-motion. From... well, you get the picture — from soup to nuts. It’s something we do more and more of these days. Because we like soup. And everyone here is a little nuts.

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The most important element in this spot was authenticity. This is about real people’s lives and livelihoods. So we steered away from anything that was manipulated digitally, opting for hand-touched analogue techniques when possible.

Our approach employed a wide range of media. We created handmade textures from film stocks and used various printing methods. We printed all of our photography and re-captured it using stop-motion techniques.

We used wood blocks, letterpress and every other OG printing technique we could get our hands on, including a good ol’ Xerox machine. And don’t sleep on the risograph. That’s our secret weapon.