The Ridley Scott Max Headroom Coke Commercials That Led To Prometheus

One of the most applauded elements of Prometheus is its production design, executed by Ridley Scott's long-time collaborator Arthur Max.

I got to speak to Max this week, and we began by talking about his first project with Scott, on some commercials for Coke that aired in the mid 80s.

Here is what Max had to tell me, followed by a video of the commercials themselves.

My relationship with Ridley is one that began about 27 years ago, working on a commercial in London and it set the tone for our way of working together.

It was probably the only other science fiction project I've done in my whole career. It was for Coca Cola and set in a dystopic future. I had to create a universe on location, a dark vision of a city, with vehicles.

On that project I began to learn how he works and what his priorities were and very much the same sort of ideas have continued through every project we've worked on since. Ideas of how to use the light, and he's particularly interested in the camera. He's a painter and so he's interested in composition. Then he likes to operate the camera himself so he likes to consider how he's going to move it through the set.

All of these elements have remained unchanged throughout our working relationship, no matter what the genre.

See also: How Terry Gilliam's Brazil Influenced TV Advertising' and Ridley Scott.