You don’t ask paint like Emerald to simply sit for a portrait — you want to see it in action. The second iteration of work for Sherwin-Williams’ best-in-class paint puts Emerald center stage, allowing it to take the star turn it deserves and leaving it up to the paint itself (along with some futuristic robotics, ultra-high-speed camera work and next-generation on-set software editing) to create an amazing story.

“As Sherwin-Williams’ finest paint, Emerald is beautiful both in its delivery of vibrant, rich colors and its ability to protect,” said McKinney Associate Creative Director David Sloan. “The spot is a study in Emerald’s ability to be both stunning and high performing.”

McKinney teamed up again with director Eben Mears of Psyop. “We started to think a lot about how to make paint move in interesting ways, how we could throw it around, make shapes, tell a different story, and how we could do more interesting and dimensional camera moves so that we could connect with the consumer in a unique and emotional way,” said Mears. “All of this is a beautiful color narrative, but it’s also taking paint and doing things with it that no one’s ever done before.”

McKinney Associate Creative Director Jordan Eakin talked about McKinney and Sherwin-Williams partnering with The Marmalade, an internationally acclaimed film production house. “Marmalade built a motion-control system called Spike, which provided unprecedented control over camera movement at very high rates of speed,” he said. “This camera setup along with paint injectors — both specific builds for the shoot — worked in tandem with a laptop version of Flame, which allowed us to view footage on-set, edit it, composite on the fly and know what we were going to end up with.”

“The forms and the techniques that we’re using are much more advanced, and we think that the outcome is incredibly exciting. A wonderful evolution of what we started a couple of years ago,” added Sloan.

“Color exploration inspires our customers and a fresh coat of paint can transform their homes,” said Ellen Moreau, SVP Marketing Communications for Sherwin-Williams. “Emerald is our best-in-class paint and this spot does a beautiful job of celebrating that.”

And what’s a cinematic experience these days without a “making of” list:

The TV and print is 100% practical, using real Emerald paint. No CGI involved.
A portable, laptop version of Flame was used for instant, on-set editing — a first for Psyop and one of the first industry uses.
All the rigs and injectors were bespoke builds specifically for the Emerald shoot.
A Phantom camera shot footage at 900–4000 frames per second.
The Phantom was mounted to Spike, an articulated robot arm with a precision guidance system developed by The Marmalade.
Original score provided by longtime industry colleagues Beacon Street Studios.

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