Ed Morris And Rattling Stick Keep It Up For The Sun

How did you get involved in the campaign?

The creative team Robert Greaves and Sam Daly at Grey sent me the script. I was up against 4 other directors (apparently). I recorded a demo of me singing and playing the song at the right tempo for a ball bounce. The whole treatment came out of that.

The concept is like something out of Record Breakers / You Bet. Did you wake up in cold-sweats during the prep? How did you work out if it was even possible?

I knew it was possible technically, what I was more concerned about was the overall tone of the piece; I wanted it to feel momentary, spontaneous.



How did you source the participants?

Andy (Tekers). You want skills, you go to Andy. If you've got 75 footballers to control you need Andy, he's an ex pro player and he speaks football and the players love him.

What was the set-up like on the day? How much rehearsal time was needed?

I did very early tests, simple ones for timing. We then had a technical camera/lens test two days before the shoot. A day before we rehearsed with everyone there. We made big discoveries and changes both days, we'd have been in a lot of shit without those days. I test a lot.



How many takes did it take to get it right? Was the track played for the participants to get the rhythm right, or was that corrected later?

Annoyingly they kept getting it perfect on the rehearsals. We'd roll camera and they'd drop it. Sods law, so lots of takes. We shot it to a BPM but adjusted it to the music after.

OK, lay it on the line – how much was captured in camera and how much was digital trickery?

On the line…all in camera. No CG at all. But, there's this clever guy Ludo Fealy at a place called nineteen twenty who helped fill a few cracks and polish it up a bit. Look at the film though, you can't fake that excitement, they're footballers not actors.



The music, a cover of The Seekers 'I'll Never Find Another You', is a little more romantic that the 'lad-centric' tunes you might expect from a World Cup spot. How was that chosen and how integral was it to the film?

I thought it was a clever choice by the agency, it conjures up the kind of love and adoration we have for our nation and team through a tournament like this. And it was big in 66.

An ad for the World Cup (and for The Sun during the World Cup, no less) is a pretty big deal. Did you feel added pressure to get it right?

I had a very supportive team around me, including the client and agency, Dave Monk the CD at Grey was a rock. We all knew it would come under close scrutiny. That's good for me though. I'm used to pressure, I've been under much more pressure.



You're well established as a commercial director now, but does your agency background ever creep in when working with other agencies? Is it tough to be a different cog in the machine?

I'm not sure about well established, there's lots more to do yet. But I'm coming at this a different way, I'm trying to re-define the role as well as the work. I've just had a film (an art piece) shown at the Hammer Museum in LA. It was something I did with Robert Del Naja from Massive Attack. I've done a documentary in my first year, a couple of promos. I always preferred directors who brought something to ads from a broader frame of reference, I'm trying to be more useful to the world of advertising by being more creative, more exploratory.

What's up next for you?

I have the smallest camera with the longest lens in the world. I'm out at night walking the streets with it, I carry it everywhere, I'm filming cranks, nutters, drunks from 3 streets away. You won't believe the shit I'm getting. I can see every line in their face. It's incredibly intimate, touching, beautiful. I can't say what it's for yet, but it could take me a year or more to finish. At the end of the summer I go in to the studio to start work on my first album. It'll be a dance album called Non Stop Hair.



Listen to the track and watch the ad at www.thesun.co.uk/dousproud to get your free download now.