Manchester Futsal Club

We were commissioned by London based agency Formidable Media and Los Angeles/London based, AKQA backed SPE Our Star Club to serve as one of four creative teams to produce content for online football platform OTRO.

This contract involved creating videos around elite footballers, offering exclusive access to their day-to-day life – behind the scenes and off the pitch.

As part of this campaign, we were also required to develop and produce content related to sport in the cities where these players were based. This included everything from micro documentaries centred around unique individuals and personalities, fan stories, match day content and stories around other, local sports teams.

Our favourite original piece from this campaign was the micro documentary that we produced around Manchester Futsal Club. We had come across the club whilst researching interesting, ground level football related stories in Manchester and were keen to explore the club’s story through a micro doc format.

We were keen to produce a visually engaging, stylised piece that fit with the tropes of sports documentaries – namely the utilisation of handheld camerawork, negative space framing and fast editing. We were heavily inspired by Nike’s ‘Whatever It Takes’ series, which utilised a similar framework.

For the interviews, we were keen to experiment with a less conventional style of framing through the utilisation of walk-and-talks, fly-on-the-wall style over-the-shoulders and low angles.

The action shots were captured at 50fps with high shutter speeds to add a chaotic aspect and allow for the integration of slow motion and speed ramps.

The edit was completed at our York studio by our MD and Head of Post-Production Michael Cornell.

We utilised three different music tracks for the piece to allow us to break it up into chapters, with each having it’s own distinctive tonality. Typography was integrated into the scenes through motion tracking to emphasise key points and lend a unique look to the edit.

We completed the edit in four days and the final video was released on the OTRO platform within two weeks of completion.