Creative Director
Client --------- Stumptown Coffee
Agency --------- Farm League
Date Released -- 2019
Project -------- Short Documentary
Director ------- Britton Caillouette
Client --------- Stumptown Coffee
Agency --------- Farm League
Date Released -- 2019
Project -------- Short Documentary
Director ------- Britton Caillouette
Wax & Gold
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A longtime client, Stumptown came to Farm League with a creatively open, yet highly specific brief looking to make a film that took place in Ethiopia. After paring back five initial ideas, we pitched a single idea of creating a visual docu-style poem interpreting Ethiopian culture, focusing on the intersection of art, music, mythology & coffee.
Our pitch centered around two Ethiopian masters Mulatu Astatke (the founder of Ethio-Jazz) & Haile Gebre (one of the country’s largest and oldest organic coffee producers). It sounded amazing on paper, but the physical distance between the US & Ethiopia combined with political insecurities made securing our talent extremely difficult. After countless emails, midnight skype calls, Whatsapp miscommunications and phone calls, we tracked down both lead characaters.
To inform the production approach, we began with the intention of releasing the film as a multi-media art exhibit & film activation. With the exhibition as the end goal, our production team armed itself with 35mm, 16mm, 4k cameras, a plethora of film stocks and multiple stills cameras.
Wax & Gold trancends the narrative driven documentary and creates an interpretive visual poem told exclusively from the Ethiopian characters in the film.
Awards ~
Webby Award Honoree
Pan African Film Festival
Vimeo Staff Pick Premiere
Our pitch centered around two Ethiopian masters Mulatu Astatke (the founder of Ethio-Jazz) & Haile Gebre (one of the country’s largest and oldest organic coffee producers). It sounded amazing on paper, but the physical distance between the US & Ethiopia combined with political insecurities made securing our talent extremely difficult. After countless emails, midnight skype calls, Whatsapp miscommunications and phone calls, we tracked down both lead characaters.
To inform the production approach, we began with the intention of releasing the film as a multi-media art exhibit & film activation. With the exhibition as the end goal, our production team armed itself with 35mm, 16mm, 4k cameras, a plethora of film stocks and multiple stills cameras.
Wax & Gold trancends the narrative driven documentary and creates an interpretive visual poem told exclusively from the Ethiopian characters in the film.
Awards ~
Webby Award Honoree
Pan African Film Festival
Vimeo Staff Pick Premiere
Film Activation
From the start, our team approached the film as an art piece first, shooting longer takes from visually dynamic angles than we normally would for a traditional doc. The exhibiton was held in a Hollywood warehouse to a sold out crowd. The film was projected onto a 50’ CYC wall with a multi screen projection experience, a coffee ceremony, traditional dance performance, Ethiopian vinyl DJ and Ethiopian food + wine + coffee pairing.
Poster + Title Design
The title Wax & Gold came from an Ethiopian traditional proverb loosely translating to the two sides of one word. The title design reflected that concept with the English and Ahmaric translation. The promotional materials used on social and in print at coffee shops as window splash included a two tone color pallette with bold typography.
