Director's Works
Burger King, We give up The Sacred Egg
The Sacred Egg (TSE) are a directing duo made up of London-based Ed Kaye and Lisbon-based Alex Mavor. Together, they’re known for delivering highly original concepts with an iconic visual aesthetic. It’s these traits that have led to their work being screened not only on television and in cinemas, but also in cultural institutions such as The British Film Institute and The Pompidou Centre. Working together since 2007 - firstly as creatives for London advertising agencies then as directors with Riff Raff Films - TSE have worked with some of the world’s best advertising agencies such as Mother, Wieden+Kennedy and Droga5, who align with their mission to make truly original and disruptive work. Their first experiences in filmmaking came through low-budget music videos. After their breakthrough video for Breach ‘Jack’ was nominated at the 2013 UK Music Video Awards, four years later their video for Royal Blood ‘Lights Out’ won Best Rock Video. They continue to collaborate with artists such as Depeche Mode with their Wagging Tongue video being nominated at the 2024 British Arrows. In 2013 they also they broke into the shiny world of Commercials, directing Finish ‘Combinations’ through W+K London, and Mailchimp ‘Did You Mean Mailchimp’ through Droga5 New York. Mailchimp went on to win a Grand Prix at Cannes amongst other coveted awards. 2017 also saw them nominated for the Frank Budgen Award for Best Director at the UK British Arrows, the pinnacle of UK advertising awards. In 2018, the TSE were Second Unit Directors for the ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ feature film which has gone on to gross over $200m worldwide. They have gone on to make commercials for brands including Apple, Smirnoff, Easyjet, Postmates, BT, Samsung, Topgolf, Reebok, Ikea winning many awards along the way. In the last three years they have picked up 13 British Arrows awards, 6 Creative Circle awards, and 3 Kinsale Sharks. Most recently in 2024 they picked up 2 Silver Arrows for Smirnoff & Burger King at the British Arrows.
On this particular project there was a decent amount of time. Particularly on the back end when it came to the post production. Which is a bit of a rare luxury these days. We loved creating the 60s and 70s world. Old cars, retro suits etc. Seeing that all come together was a very fun day on location. Challenge wise, trying to get as many (legible) whopper adverts into one film as possible without it feeling overtly signposted was probably the trickiest thing. We wanted it to feel seamless. Obviously some bits work better than others. The way you storyboard things is obviously the starting point of how these whopper adds would be revealed. But when you actually film them so many more factors (what’s in focus, camera moves, extras in the way) come into play and at points had to slightly rethink the boards. The other challenge was to get the man across 5 decades in 30/60 seconds. Originally we had more elaborate transitions from one era to the next but the further we got into the process the more we simplified these gimmicks. And we’re glad we did, it probably flows a bit better without them.