A ball can create a legend. A ball can Start Something Priceless.
Brand- Mastercard
Client – Dadbod Films
Talent – Jose Mourinho
Venue – Exhibition London
The Brief –
We were approached by Dadbod films to assist with their treatment for the ‘A ball can create a legend’ Jose Mourinho promo to be shown in connection with the Champions League final.
The concept was an interview with Jose in an abstract warehouse space with screens depicting various memories from his illustrious career so far.
We worked closely with director Harry Barber and their creative team to find a screen layout and combination that met the aesthetic proposed in the initial treatment while also working with the limitations of the venue and a modest budget.
The Tech –
The design ended up being a large circular central projection flanked by an assortment of sizes of our professional Samsung LED backlit displays. Working from Dadbod’s creative brief our technical designer positioned the screens in an appropriate order to give the semi-symmetrical, randomised look that Harry was after. This then needed to be ground supported so we designed a custom built, stand alone tube structure to support the screens, while not straying too far from the warehouse aesthetic of the space. Stacks of CRT monitors were added in front of our structures to finish the overall look.
The biggest challenge for this project was playing synchronised content to all 11 screens independently, which was a crucial element due to the narrative nature of the advert. Thankfully our Disguise d3 4×2 pro server has a lot of headroom, so we established that we could make it work within the capabilities of that server. We knew that we wouldn’t be able to output 11 channels of 1080p, but nor did we need to. The content was always going to be football footage, and had clearly been recorded and compressed at 720p or lower. Therefore we could output 3 lots of 2560 x 1440 to three of our Datapath FX4 signal splitters where the image was divided out giving us a total of twelve 720p independent video outputs from the one server.
The Product –
Brilliantly directed and conceived by Harry, the advert captures the emotion and gravitas of the game and is a prime example of how screens and video playback can be used within this medium to convey the experience of someone digesting footage and the memories which it provokes.
