The script for a 60 second commercial to kick start the multi-million pound International advertising campaign for the Bee Gees' Greatest Hits album, required a camera to get 'up close and personal' with different parts of a record player.

This would have been impossible on the real thing, so we built an exact replica twice upscale.  It was made to behave just as the real thing would, but with a much smoother action. 

The attention to detail had to be precise to cope with close up scrutiny and it required particularly reflective surfaces for old Bee Gees footage to be projected onto them (in post).  Removable sides and components were also incorporated to make the close-up filming as easy as possible.

To get the grooves of the record to look realistic we had to cut them in the same way as an actual record would have been cut by designing an upscale cutting tool, mounting it onto the tool post of a lathe and playing Bee Gees tracks into it. The twice scale records you see in the commercial really are capable of playing the tracks you hear, although the fidelity leaves something to be desired.

"It’s when you can’t tell it’s a model, that we can feel we’ve achieved our objective."