Cosmic Pickle.

Why we shot it

Nobody commissioned this one, and that's worth saying plainly rather than dressing it up. We were in Austin, Cosmic Pickle is a genuinely good venue, and we wanted a hospitality piece in the reel that had been shot somewhere real.

Most UGC that agencies show you was made under a brief, in controlled conditions, with the client's shot list in hand. That's fine, but it doesn't tell you much about whether the people making it can walk into an unfamiliar space on a hot afternoon and come out with something usable. This one does.

What we made

One vertical edit for Instagram, built around three things: their Frozen Test Flight of cocktails, the outdoor space and garden the venue is known for, and the Frozen Matcha Painkiller they've become a bit famous for.

Shot handheld on location in a single afternoon. No lighting rig, no crew, no second day. The venue does most of the work - dappled shade, string lights, food trucks along the back, the neon out front - and the job of the edit is to move quickly enough to hold attention without turning it into an advert.

You can watch the finished reel on Instagram, and the venue itself is at 121 Pickle Rd in South Austin.

What it demonstrates

There are no performance numbers on this page, because it wasn't a paid campaign and we're not going to invent any. What it shows is the thing that's actually hard to fake: whether the content is good.

Food and drink is unforgiving on camera. Condensation, melt, harsh Texas sun, plastic cups. If the shot list is wrong or the pacing is slow, no amount of editing saves it. We put this on the site because it stands up on its own terms - and because the UGC we make for paying clients is shot exactly the same way.