One of the most popular adverts at the moment in the UK is the Even Angels Will Fall campaign created by The Mill in tandem with BBH and acclaimed director Rupert Sanders. It is one of those adverts that you are really never too sure what it is for until the end – and then it becomes transparently obvious.

The inhabitants of a sleepy European town are shocked to see divine creatures falling from the sky. What are the angels here for on earth? What is their purpose? Their objective is a lot more down to earth than you may imagine!

In fact the whole (very expensive) exercise is to advertise the new Lynx Excite range of deodorants for men. Yet the combination of light hearted humor with beautiful visual imagery has produced a very popular advert and one which even the most religious of people have seen as harmless – quite a job to pull off.

One of the greatest challenges of filming the ad was the VFX where a number of challenges had to be overcome, not least the wings – letting them move and flap in a realistic way. In order to do that CG doubles were created and the wings were attached to them. The VFX team were also granted access to the Natural History Museum’s Ornithology department in which the vast majority of the bird species in the world are documented. With this the designers were able to come up with wings that looked like they could belong to angels while at the same time keeping true to nature.

Overall, a vastly enjoyable and popular campaign.