This city is the business
Client: MIDAS
Project: This place, this city is the business
Deliverables:
1 x 0:80s brand film for events, social and web usage.
1 x 0:95s brand film translated into Japanese and tailored to a international market.
42 x 4K screengrabs for blog and social posts
Location: Manchester, UK
Dead Pixel did:
Ideation, script writing & creative Treatment
Pre-production
Casting
Location scouting and sourcing permits
8 days filming on location
>20 locations sourced and filmed
Directing
Editing & grade
Quote of the Shoot:
“We clamped a camera to the side of a black cab and the driver tested it going up the steepist, bumpiest road in Manchester. Breaths were held…"
The Brief
The brief was to create a brand film that showcases the business opportunities in Manchester without feeling overly corporate.
That included investments in the city, healthcare, tech, academic institutions, diversity of people, hospitality and more. It needed to have a large business focus whilst maintaining interest for a broad audience.
How we showcased that was completely up to us…
Pre-Production
We decided to go with a spoken-word brand film voiced by local poet Gabriel that was a bit ‘rhymy’ in places but with a down to earth tone.
We wrote the script alongside a visual storyboard to in order to clearly map out the concept, scenes and potential locations. We knew we wanted to feature Gabriel on camera throughout the video and the rest was to be covered with beautiful visuals shot on location.
Our client had particular moments & business partners in mind that we absolutely had to feature. The rest was a creative collaboration and we were basically set loose to do whatever we wanted.
Onto production…
The core crew consisted of:
Director / DOP
Producer - keeping things on schedule and liaising with the locations or talent
Camera Assistant - to help switch lenses
Production assistant - to help rig up stands, lights and carry kit
And that was it. It wasn’t a big squad but everyone had their roles and meant the production was simple and stress-free.
We shot this ad on our RED Gemini with sigma lenses for 90% of the ad. The other 10% was the Sony FX3 where we clamped the camera in some funky positions to add visual interest.
Production
This brand film was shot over 8 days fitting in up to 3 locations a day working with as many as 8 different cast members plus extras. That’s a lot of moving parts, with people that need casting and scheduling in.
Jazz, our producer did all this using her trusty production bible casting a variety of ages and ethnicities to feature across the scenes.
One of the most challenging locations to acquire was Piccadilly train station. This is the busiest train station in Manchester with over 70,000 passengers coming through it every day. Security is super tight (for obvious reasons) and we needed to fill out a lot of paperwork in order to bring our small film crew on site.
Each location was booked, permitted or secured through private connections to make sure we had the correct permissions to be there.
Post-Production
As the production took place over 8 days spread across 3 weeks, we were able to edit as we went along. It meant we could work out what shots we needed and avoided over shooting just for the sake of it. The edit came together really quickly with minimal feedback from the client. The final deliverables consisted of two versions. One 80s edit and a 60s online version.
The 80s edit featured a few sequences that backed up the new partnership between Osaka, Japan and Manchester. They’re now sister cities with business and cultural exchanges taking place for years to come. Something we’re incredibly proud to be able to say we were part of that.
If you’ve got this far and want to know how the project came to be, why not watch our behind the scenes video below:
Behind the scenes with Dead Pixel and MIDAS
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