The soft-drink superfan made a short film in a closed car park which was shown on prime time TV.
A Dundee woman has donned her skates to create a video which has been viewed on national TV and online by thousands after she won a competition run by Irn-Bru.
Ellen Jane Garland submitted a video called ‘skaters’ to Irn-Bru’s #GetYouThrough campaign, which features her at first falling on her skates and then acing her moves after taking a swig of the soft drink, and was one of five to have her video selected to be aired on prime time television.
The 25-year-old, who is originally from Edinburgh and has recently graduated in criminology from Abertay University, said the experience was her “lockdown highlight”, having recruited her friends to help make the video.
The five superfan videos were shown on last week’s Alan Carr’s Epic Gameshow on STV which airs from 7.30pm to 8.30pm on Saturday nights.
More than 100 entries were submitted but Ellen’s creative video amused the judging panel, which included showbiz journalist Bev Lyons and the team at Irn-Bru, and bagged herself a place in the top five.
And although Ellen says she loved every minute of the experience, the biggest laugh for her was not getting to see her work air live because she doesn’t have a TV license.
She said: “It was so much fun, I would totally do it again. I shared it on social media and told everyone I was going to be on TV. We don’t have live TV in my flat so I didn’t get to see it live. We don’t have a TV license so we only saw it after my friend videoed it on her TV and sent it over.
“I’m super obsessed with Irn-Bru. One of my friends tagged me on one of the brand’s Facebook posts and said that I had to do it. I’d just come back to Dundee from Edinburgh nearing the end of lockdown and I messaged my friends and said I need to do this. Last month I took up quad rollerskating and I thought it would be perfect for an advert.
“It was kind of amazing. My friend said I had such a good concept and had a good chance of winning and I felt like I maybe did have a chance. To get that message from Irn-Bru was really cool – I was like ‘they’ve seen my advert and know how much I love it’.”
Filming it in Dundee’s Greenmarket Car Park, Ellen and her friends took advantage of the quieter city centre facility to shoot the video, all within four hours.
She added: “I filmed it at the Greenmarket Car Park near the railway station. During lockdown people weren’t really coming into town to shop so it was the perfect place to go and practice rollerskating.
“I had the idea to do roller skating a few days after being tagged in the post. The campaign is all about what gets you through and I thought I could do something on me being bad at skating and then being good. It was the next weekend we all got together.
“I got some of my friends who roller skate involved and some of them have been skating and playing roller derby for five or six years. My friend Sally did most of the filming for us as she had a tripod. We headed to the car park around 2pm and finished filming at 6pm. We filmed a lot more than we needed.
“Last summer Irn-Bru had a promotion running and you got a code on every product and you’d put it into the website to see if you had won anything. I don’t think I’ve ever drank so much Irn-Bru and I won so many things including the inflatable unicorn in the video. My Irn-Bru tattoo also made an appearance.
“I did intend to write a storyboard for the day, but my friend Sally and I just used Zoom after filming to create it. We used Google Drive to share all the footage – it was a real team effort.”
The other videos in the roundup included; Apocalypse by Jack Fox, Edinburgh, Sunbathing by Derek “Dezza” Park, from Coatbridge, Getting younger by Taylor Gray, from Cambuslang, and Hingamy by Sean McGroarty, from Caldercruix.
The advert provided a tongue-in-cheek take on how a taste of the drink can reinvigorate fans and give them strength to take on trying times, celebrating the ability of Scots to bounce back from tough situations.
Adrian Troy, AG Barr marketing director, said: “We get phenomenal content from our fans every day and we’ve always known they have an amazing sense of humour. Irn-Bru Gets You Famous has been a brilliant laugh and gives our superfans their own moment in the spotlight.
“All of the adverts were recorded during Scotland’s lockdown, so it’s safe to say the creativity and humour amongst the community of our fans in challenging times has been outstanding.”
