Hasta La Creative!

Willie Nelson, Coldplay, Chipotle and director Johnny Kelly have made a creative alliance with the Chipotle Cultivate Foundation to create BACK TO THE START, a short animated film highlighting the issue of sustainable farming. Chipotle founder Steve Ells met with Johnny Kelly in London to talk about his passionate efforts to source food on a more sustainable and ethical basis. The film is a result of this conversation. Music legend Willie Nelson, well known for his support of family farmers, was a perfect collaborator for the music. His cover of Coldplay’s highly evocative track “The Scientist,” movingly underscores the animation with Nelson’s voice experience. The pace and timeline of the film is captured beautifully in camera using traditional stop frame model animation techniques to track the life of a farmer. Filmed in one sweeping take the film was painstakingly animated over 4-weeks on one large all-encompassing model background. The track has been released on iTunes with 60 cents from every sale going to the Chipotle Cultivate Foundation.

Advertising Agency: CAA and Chipotle, USA
Production Company: Nexus Productions
Film Director: Johnny Kelly
Production Company Producer: Liz Chan