Carbon Bakes Up Cannes Gold with 'Let There Be Cake'

​Bruno Bossi and Kirsten Clarence caught up with SUPERCLUSTER about the making of the project and what it means to be recognised at this level. They reflect on the production process, creative decision-making, and the broader significance of the win — both for Carbon and for the South African production industry.

The SUPERCLUSTER team are proud to count Carbon among its partners. Carbon continues to raise the creative bar.

Q> In your eyes, what makes a Cannes winner? Is it the craft, the concept, the cultural timing or something else entirely?

Carbon> Craft and concept are the two main reasons anyone even gets a finalist at Cannes. What takes it across the line to becoming a Gold is when all of those things line up perfectly to land the idea in a fresh and compelling way. In order for it to land in the Gold zone every aspect of the film needs to serve the concept and none can have even the smallest flaw: editing, cinematography, casting, production design all need to be spotless.

The film then needs to push the genre and cultural insight into a place where judges and the audience feel like it’s something they haven’t seen before.

Q> Was there a specific moment in the process — on set, in post, or even in the pitch — where you felt like, “We’ve got something here”?

Carbon> For me it was in the edit room. The idea was strong and we had pushed the narrative into a place that felt fresh, but it had to land in a genre bending way - the edit is where I first felt that it was on the way to becoming great.

Q> Did the team at Carbon approach this production any differently than usual, knowing the creative potential of the project?

Carbon> We partnered with our production partner in Thailand (TaProd) who Bruno had been working with for a few years. We approached it the way we do with all productions - we gave it all of our attention and ensured that we had the best production team onboard. Critically we had an amazing production design team and that is where Thailand really shines.

Q> What was the biggest challenge during the production of Let There Be Cake, and how did you overcome it?

Carbon> Creating the in-camera cake shots was critical to the success of the film. We wanted to avoid using CG as much as we could and that required some testing of various approaches to making realistic cake objects like the couch arm.

Q> Was there a creative risk you took on this project that you think paid off in the final result?

Carbon> A few of the scenes took some bravery. We presented the handless man and held our breath. Luckily our client wasn’t just brave, he was passionate about the crazy ideas we had presented and understood that the script needed some calculated risk-taking.

Q> What’s a surprising behind-the-scenes twist from making this film — a challenge, lucky break, or unexpected turn that shaped the final cut?

Carbon> As with every project, we were working to a super tight shooting schedule, so when we discovered an entire card had been lost to a corrupt file, we had to make a quick call on how to salvage the scene. We managed to squeeze in one re-shoot of the master wide before losing light, and fortunately, the remaining missing shots were from the reporter scene. We pulled that material from the Q-take system for the final cut and, because it was meant to have a broadcast-style look, it blended in seamlessly — you’d never guess it wasn’t the original camera footage.

Q> Has the win changed anything in your approach moving forward? Does it add pressure — or open more freedom?

Carbon > It does both.

The pressure to produce better work has always been self-imposed, but this win does push you even more. But only to produce better work, not to just win more awards.

It’s never been about winning awards - they’re great - but they don’t validate you as a director or producer. Plenty of great work doesn’t win awards, but is still amazing.

What it does is allow you to present your ideas in a room and people will pay attention. It opens up more doors to conversations as it serves as a creative stamp of approval on the next project.

Q> What does winning Gold at Cannes Lions actually mean for a company like Carbon — both creatively and commercially?

Carbon> We never set out to win awards. We’ve always believed in producing the best work no matter what the brief. What this does is allow us access to more great scripts, agencies and clients as well as other production companies around the globe.

Cannes is an amazing platform to get recognised on a global stage and winning a Gold on that stage does give other companies the validated confidence to work with us. We’ve already seen an interest in us as a company and in our directors.

Q> South African talent has been gaining more international recognition in recent years — do you feel this win says something bigger about the region’s creative scene?

Carbon> South Africa has historically been a creative force in the advertising world. We have consistently shown up at Cannes. For such a small market we have managed to carve a reputation for great work for a number of years.

More recently we’ve been featured in radio and a few other categories but this film win will hopefully re-ignite the fire in our own region to show how we can still hold our own on the global stage in one of the toughest categories.

Q> If you could give one piece of advice to a young director or producer aiming for Cannes, what would it be — beyond ‘make good work’?

Carbon> Great ideas are just a starting point. They need to be interrogated, stretched, torn apart and then re-assembled. Your job as a director is to push the ideas further.

Often you get a script that has either had too little time to be fully formed or has spent months going through round after round of reverts and research. Or even a script that seems great from the start.

Each of these moments should be seen as an opportunity to make the script better. Crafting a script doesn’t just happen on set or in post production. It happens in the treatment and the many meetings and PPMs before you even get onto set.

Use those meetings to continually craft the ideas so that by the time you get to set you should be in a position to make great work.

And if the judges agree with you in a room somewhere on the Croisette then consider that a job well done.