Wolves x JD ft. Reepa
Client: Wolves FC x JD Sport
Project: Brand partnership launch
Location: Molineux stadium, Wolverhampton
Deliverables:
1 x 02:25min music video
1 x 0:50 social cutdown in 9x16, 1x1 and 16x9
20+ 4K screengrabs
Dead Pixel did:
Creative treatment
Shot lists & schedule
Pre-production & logistics
Filming (inc. FPV drone)
Directing
Editing & grade
Quote of the Shoot:
“If you didn’t have a JD bag in school, you hadn’t lived"
The commercial partnership team from Wolverhampton Wanderers FC approached us with a killer brief…
“We want to announce JD Sports as our new Official Sleeve Partner via filming local rapper, Reepa, on the pitch surrounded by a 30-piece orchestra but not sure how to pull it off, can you help?”
Pre-production
We began pulling together some references, moodboards and potential shots to cover the live performance of Reepa.
We knew we wanted to be on a pitch at night allowing for maximum impact of the lighting & pyrotechnics. This also comes with a whole host of challenges such as the sun setting at 9pm in May, excessive noise caps at 11pm and out of hours working for the crew. Everything had to be planned to a tee to allow us the time to capture enough coverage for an impactful music video; the weather forecast had other ideas.
All the core department roles were covered in-house by the Dead Pixel team bringing on additional support for lighting, pyro, drones and make-up to elevate the production.
Production
We arrived on site around 3pm to begin unloading and prepping the equipment. We filmed a few intro and detail scenes inside whilst we waited for the sun to set.
10pm approached and it was still raining. The orchestra, rightly so, said they couldn’t perform in the rain as the moisture will severely damage their equipment. We had no choice but to come up with plan B and stare at the radars hoping the rain would pass before our cutoff time of 11pm.
By 10:15pm and the rain had stopped!
The orchestra gave the green light and we charged on pitch, turned on playback and started setting off pyro! We sent up the FPV drone and by 11pm we wrapped with enough coverage to turn the live performance into and epic music video.
Post-Production
We had a rough cut pulled together within 4 days and a basic grade shared with the Wolves content team. They loved it first time round and asked for a few minor tweaks.
We made the decision in the edit reduce the length of track ‘Green Light Grove’ by 30s knowing full well the content was to be used on social media. This way we could feature Reepa on screen earlier and maintain audiences attention and allow for the biggest impact.
Once the finished music video was signed off we went through a full colour grade and began creating a shorter, punchy social first edit in 9x16 and 1x1 to be used on various platforms.
With >3,500 likes and 245,000 plays on Instagram alone within the first few days, it’s safe to say the partnership launch was well received and thoroughly enjoyed industry wide.
Behind the scenes with Dead Pixel, Wolves & JD Sport
