Written by on Apr 7, 2014. Posted in Production News

JWT India splices amateur cricket games filming dynamic new Nike spot

Agency JWT India filmed in cities across the country to create a striking new spot for Nike. Make Every Yard Count took thousands of split-second clips from amateur cricket games across India to create a single 80-second match extract.

To create the spot, cricket enthusiasts across India were invited to film their games and post footage online using social media. Crucially, the uploaded shots had to be filmed from very specific angles to enable a seamless final edit.

“The bowler would always leap over the wicket for the delivery, the batsman would always attack the ball to play a hook shot and the fielder would always dive and throw the ball to the keeper,” explains Senthil Kumar, National Creative Director at JWT India and also the campaign’s director.

“Thousands of images in these split-second action key frames were uploaded and captured by ‘cricket crazy youth’ across cities, towns and even some villages.”

These crowd-sourced images were supplemented by photos taken by more than a hundred separate photographers, who JWT India sent out across the country to aid the process.

“All the 108 photographers were briefed about the same action in vivid detail,” Kumar continues, “and the same key frames of the action were handed out to them well before they began their respective journeys to capture the ‘cricket crazy’ action across thousands of playing fields across the country.”

The agency eventually sourced more than a quarter of a million photos from cricket matches in nine major cities, 200 towns and a selection of more remote villages. From this initial collection, the final spot was digitally stitched together using 1,440 separate photos, at a rate of up to 20 a second. The whole production process took 60 days.

“Everything was difficult but that’s what makes the challenge worthy,” Kumar concludes.

Credits:
Client: Nike
Agency: JWT India
National Creative Director/Film Director: Senthil Kumar
Copywriter: Dhruv Warrior
Production Company: 1st December Films, Bangalore
Producer: Atul Kattukaran
Director of Photography: Anup J Kattukaran and a team of 108 photographers