Sky Sports
THE BRIEF
Take fans on tour with the British & Irish Lions and connect them with the team in a way that hasn't been done before.
BACKGROUND
Stamp's feature films for Sky Sports include Lions Raw and Lions Uncovered.
There are few things that beat the feeling of being part of a team on a project like The Lions. The amazing alchemy that happens when the right team coalesce around a shared dream is not something easily replicated and it’s especially hard when time, funds and resources are limited. The challenges the team faced, dealing with injury, arduous travel, missing family, and the enormous pressure that is the crucible of test match Rugby, are in many ways replicated by our challenges as the filmmakers. We have taken risks and used all our passion and expertise, to ensure the Lions legend continues to grow and the viewer can immerse themselves in the incredible tours.
Match play is secondary in films like these, it's a Macguffin helping drive the story forwards putting obstacles in front of the players as they strive towards their dreams. The fans get a front row seat as they watch the blood, sweat and tears of a tour unfold and brotherhoods forge under the intense pressure of elite sport far from home.
Story first supported by high production vales and ways of getting the tour unfiltered.
Cinematography
High-end cinematography delivers the highest possible production values that far exceed the budget. The tight filming team have worked together for years and is led by Ben Uttley, who learnt from years watching and working with Oscar winning cinematographers like Darius Khondji (Seven) and Robert Richardson (JFK, KILL BILL).
It is 100% Fly on the wall documentary but is, on many occasions, as beautifully shot as scripted.
The score
From licensing the score from The Last of the Mohicans for the final test in Austraila to crafting a score for the tour to New Zealand which we recorded with the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.
On release, we were the number one best selling documentary on Amazon in any genre beating the high profile, high budget, Blue Planet II.
Revenue from the 1st week of sales, equated to three times the cost of the films production.
The trailer and clips we created to promo the film have achieved todate, the following with no media spend:
There were in excess of 1 Million+ Video Views (1.18M) across allsocial platforms for supporting clips around the release:
Facebook: 548K
YouTube: 273K
Twitter: 217K
Instagram: 149K
The “Siri” clip, was the best performing Video getting 267K Viewsand reaching an audience of over 850K on Facebook while the trailerreceived 203K in 24 hours.
Total Facebook engagement for all video clips was 161K in the lead up to release.
Title sequence
To highlight just a few: The Lions 129 Year Heritage is etched in photos and the writing of the names of the first ever Lions team. This is connected to the future tours to NZ and in the style of text as the 2017 team arrive in Auckland. Look at the centre left image. The word pressure was lifted from the training week and a real training board written by Andy Farrell.
