Section 6 of 7
What makes the shoot difficult
A squad is available for days, not weeks. A ball struck at pace never repeats itself exactly. And the finished film has to carry its argument on a muted phone screen in a market that will never hear the audio. These three constraints explain most of what football advertising looks like.
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The players are not actors and the schedule knows it
Squad availability is measured in days between fixtures, so the shoot is built around a window that cannot move.
The infrastructure goes up in hours because the squad is available in days. -
The ball has to behave, and it usually does not
A scripted piece of play has to be repeatable on camera, which is why the shot list is built around what can actually be delivered twenty times.
Struck at pace, a ball clusters around the intended shape and never quite repeats it. -
It has to work with the sound off, in nine languages
A global campaign is cut for silent playback and for markets that will never hear the original audio, so the story has to be carried by picture alone.
The cut is reviewed muted, before picture lock.