We’ve been creating grassroots and elite netball content for over a decade now and have been lucky to work on a wide variety of projects during that time. We’ve seen firsthand what netball means to the people involved and it’s a sport that’s grown very close to our hearts. So we were thrilled when an email came across our inbox saying a financial institution was looking to invest in and support the continued development of grassroots netball (and also looking to create some content ahead of the Netball World Cup!).
With the Netball World Cup fast approaching, this campaign was going to be a tight turnaround. Working with Kim Parker at Liber8 Sport and the force of nature that is Steph Harries of the Women’s Sports Group, we got stuck in to developing concepts and ideas to make this social content project something special.
The client, Allica Bank has a vision to empower small and medium-sized businesses to succeed and it was this idea of support that became the driving force behind the campaign.
The concept ‘Support Us’ was chosen to encourage fans to support our players at the Netball World Cup, but also continue to support the wider sport of netball.
We were lucky to be working with incredible netball talent for this campaign. Firstly, Tamsin Greenway, esteemed former international England player, Sky Sports Broadcaster and Scotland Head Coach (to name just a few of her netball roles!). We’d been lucky to work with Tamsin on an England Netball project several years ago and were really excited she’d be involved being such an advocate for the sport.
Secondly, Laura Malcolm, current England Rose international player. Laura is hugely admired for her passion for the sport and the enthusiasm she brings on and off the court in the continued development of netball. With some fun concepts planned for the day, we were looking forward to having such a great talent pairing in front of camera.
Thirdly and finally, we were thrilled to have Sasha Corbin as our final talent for the day. If you’re a netball fan, the legendary Corbin sisters need no introduction as hugely loved members of the netball family. However there was one small challenge to overcome. Sasha, although formerly an England player, had switched to play for Barbados for this world cup and was currently out training in the Caribbean ahead of the tournament.
We weren't going to miss out on Sasha's infectious personality! We decided to use the ‘old TV’ device which would allow us to record Sasha’s interview on Zoom and then incorporate naturally into the content we filmed at our location with Laura and Tamsin. Ben was soon on the hunt on eBay for just the right vintage TV to complement the project and his search talents quickly found the perfect orange coloured model to match Allica’s corporate brand colours. A trip round the M25 later and our key prop was secured.
Loughborough University was chosen for our venue. Given our close relationship with the University we were able to secure two fantastic locations in Holywell for the day. Firstly a large double fitness studio, serving as the location for our interviews and discussion content and secondly ‘New Victory Hall’, a high-end sports hall which would be the location for our action and b-roll footage.
This project was a fantastic opportunity to bring out some of our high end cinema lighting gear. Relying as always on our trusty Litepanel kit we could manoeuvre for single and double shots with Laura and Tamsin throughout the day. We also were able to give our new Quasar Science Rainbow 2 tube lights their first run out, booming them in behind our talent.
Tamsin and Laura very kindly carved out five hours from their busy training schedules for us on the day, however we had five key pieces of content to capture so we had to move quickly. The fitness studio was our location for the first part of the day, capturing interviews for our hero film, a discussion with Tamsin and Laura making their predictions for the tournament ahead and also capturing a range of still photographs to illustrate the campaign.
For the second half of the day we moved onto the netball court, replicating the similar lighting for netball action and a quiz to see who had the best netball knowledge!
After a great shoot day we headed back down the M1 and started preparation for the second filming day. We wanted to expand on the footage from day 1 with a range of more cinematic, narrative style shots to really add to the story of the hero film. We’d lined up a range of netball players for a second day of filming to add into the hero film to support the content with Tamsin and Laura.
We started the day at a local sports centre, calling in local netball player Daisy Horler Anstiss (who you may recognise from our Netflix documentary ‘Game On: The Unstoppable Rise of Women’s Sport). Ben had been working hard on a narrative concept of using similar looking players at different ages to represent a visual journey throughout the piece, starting with a young player being inspired by seeing netball on television all the way through to pulling on the famous Red dress and becoming an international netball player. Daisy took on the role of our International player, playing the role of an elite netballer pulling on the Red Dress in the changing room ahead of her debut.
Next we headed back to the studio to capture Sasha’s Zoom interview in a brief break she had from netball training, then it was on to capture our young fan being inspired by seeing netball on TV, before heading back to our sports centre to capture a young player on court in a grassroots game, capitalising on the beautiful golden hour evening light.
The last piece of the puzzle was a voice over to tie the film together. We called in our good friend and artist Beth Morris, who lent her vocal talents to the piece. Bringing a delivery that matched the professionalism that a film for a financial institution required but also bring a warmth that represented the tone of the piece.
It was such a pleasure to bring this campaign to life and a huge thank you to Tamsin, Laura, Sasha, Kim, Steph and everyone who made it happen. You can check out the hero film for the ‘Support Us’ netball social content campaign below…
Much love
Ben&Jack