How To... Film 1,000 People

It was a scorching hot summer’s day in Haggerston when the team from Anomaly popped into our studio armed not only with a huge bag of ice creams but a dream brief that would eventually become an incredibly ambitious shoot.

Anomaly had recently won the Freeview account with the imaginative concept of creating over 400 commercials instead of the usual one-big-hitter. In addition to this, Anomaly’s idea was to gain exclusive access to scripts to some of the biggest shows. They would run hundreds of short contextual films in TV ad breaks that would comment on the storylines of the programmes that happened that day.

Before the actual pitch we went back to Anomaly for a ‘tissue’ meeting to share some our first thoughts and initial sketches. Our idea was to create a huge human animation machine. In fact 4,000 humans, one big warm and cosy love-in that could create dozens of mesmerising patterns using not only their bodies but thousands of hand-made props.

Their faces lit up... So, after only a week or so of minor tweaks (ie using a cast of 1,000 not 4,000), the idea was sold into Freeview and we were suddenly hit with the hard reality of creating and delivering 30 commercials in four weeks!

The first task was to work out what exactly we were going to do with 1,000 people. We set ourselves a number of rules, one was we didn’t want it to be perfect, like the Beijing Olympic Games [below].

Although this was beautiful to look at it lacked warmth and Britishness. We wanted this commercial to be human, visually accessible, stand up to repeat viewing and something we could all connect with.

What should we do with this crowd? Easy! Let’s throw huge balls at them/do a huge Mexican wave/all wave a 1,000 flags/open umbrellas/shine torches. Well easy for us, as we had over 50 ideas after the first brainstorm. Not so easy for our incredible props guy, Jack Kirby, as he nearly fell off his chair when we told him we needed over 14,000 props.

We created over 30 animated pre-visuals of every set-up so the agency and client would understand the movements that would be created. A detailed document plotting our camera angle, wardrobe and prop changes was also put together in collaboration with our 1st AD.

We had just one day of rehearsals and pre-light before filming. Our brilliant choreographers split the cast into groups of 50 people, each with their own chaperone. This chaperone would direct their groups to wardrobe, lunch areas and of course the row of 30 portaloos that had been hired.

In the studio we created a grid system on the floor and walls so knew exactly where the edge of camera-safe would be and helped direct the moment more accurately. We filmed it on a Red Dragon which was locked-off in the roof of the studio. We made the decision to film everything at 50fps in 6k as we wanted to future-proof the footage and give ourselves flexibility to zoom-in in post if necessary. 

Once we saw the crowd moving in-camera we all did a little high-five as were overwhelmed by the impact of it all and it looked so much better than we were expecting.

Having the unique opportunity of 1,000 people at our disposal, we wanted to create something that sounded as spectacular as it looks. In advance, we worked closely with Rich Martin from Envy, who helped us develop some great percussive sound ideas. We then worked with the choreographers to give the cast simple movements that would create noises like stomping, clapping, ooooo’s and ahhh’s to create the foundations of a soundtrack to the visuals.

At the end of the day this was one of the smoothest, most enjoyable projects we’ve been involved in and that all comes down to not only the amazing coordination of production team but the open relationship we had with the agency and the client.

Would we do it again? Yes, totally, but next time we’d love to do it with 8,000 people!