Burn Never Extinguish

Coca Cola has released “Never Extinguish”, a short film released as the latest element in a global campaign advertising Burn energy drink. Filmed in Buenos Aires in July 2011, the short film features professional European skateboarders Rune Glifberg, Jonas Skroder, Hugo Maillard and Dany Hamard and the fuel that feeds their drive to “chase it, feed it and make it stronger”. The film opens with Hugo falling off his board, symbolizing the failures that accompany success. The four skateboarders do their thing in the Buenos Aires housing estate, daring to ride towards an approaching tornado of fire. The four-minute film now airing online, in cinemas, at skateboard events globally, and on burn-film.com

Ash Bolland, film director, is also a skater. Bolland felt all the tricks had to be achieved for real and in-camera to give the film authenticity. In fact almost everything seen in the film is real: the tricks, the fire, the debris – the tornado is the only thing created in CGI.

“Professional skaters spend their lives traveling the world, crashing on people’s apartment floors. It’s a grass roots profession, and I wanted to depict it in an authentic way, which is why the film opens with one of the guys falling off his board. There’s something about starting off with a failure that instantly makes it a lot more honest,” says Bolland.

“This film is about evoking an emotion of skateboarding and the struggle to do want you really want to do in life. The tornado is a metaphor for life holding you back, instead of just keeping on doing what you want to do. So when Rune throws his skateboard into the tornado in the final shot, it’s a ‘fuck you’ to all the things that get in the way.”

The Burn campaign was developed in Italy.