BIG at the Brits – Shooting the Mastercard Brits Campaign 2024 with trailblazing students
An exhilaratingly creative campaign for the 2024 Brit Awards, shot with Craft McCann & Mastercard, featuring fantastically talented design & music students at The Brit School.
Back in December, I was lucky enough – working alongside my friends Lily & co at LXL Creative – to win the job of shooting the 2024 Brit Awards ad campaign with agency Craft McCann, for their client Mastercard.
The Kids Are Alright
For the last few years, Mastercard has given all its BRITs ad space to 16-18 year old students at stellar arts academy The Brit School, which it sponsors.
Music, design & technology students responded to a brief in their medium: a song, a dress, a jumper, a drawing, an animation or a makeup concept.
The winners chosen, creatives Fred Corazza & Alex Smith at McCann dreamt up three imaginative worlds for the students & their creations to inhabit.
Three Worlds
The stills shoot would happen first, defining the costume, makeup & visual style for each world, for the subsequent moving image ident shoot.
So, Lily brought in the costume & specialist makeup & SFX teams to realise the student’s ideas.
While I designed lighting states to create drama & mood: each world needed a distinct identity, but continuity across the campaign was vital.
Posing Like Pros
On shoot day at The Brit School, the costume team & makeup teams readied the students. My team set about crafting the light to perfection.
Skeleton comps of the CGI worlds & a rough sense of grouping & pose helped us manage technical factors while staying creative.
We were asking the 14 students to act like professional models, but these young people are 16-18 & not performance specialists. Their favourite tunes, lots of chat & a closed set helped them unselfconcious & imaginatively engaged as the BTS Video above hopefully shows.
The Final Campaign
The shoot completed, it was over to a brilliant post production team to finish the images & create the worlds.
You can see how our finished images slotted into the campaign below. There were even animated versions for digital screens.
BIG at The Brits
It was fantastic to see the finished artwork come together, but even better during Brit Awards week, when the O2 was papered wall-to-wall with the campaign – including 60ft tall banners!
I also went along with the students to see their reactions to seeing themselves & their creativity writ large on such a major UK stage.
It was fantastic to be part of such a creative (carbon neutral!) process, & so fantastic to help the students’ ideas become reality!
The Students & Their Work
Shoot Team
Creatives: @fredcorazza.art @alexsmith999
CD: Luca Corteggiano
Business Leads: Madison Milward, Kris Chay
Project Manager: @stuartjecasey
Producer: Zara Balf
Production Company: @craft__uk
Print Producer: Martin McGinn
Creative Stills Producer: @lilyduffield @lxlcreative
SFX Makeup: @candy_puxe
Makeup: @fernandapazmua
Hair: Jamie McCormick
Production Manager: @jofogarty.production
Production Coordinator @caitduggan
Sustainability Lead: @philbriggs2502
Creative Stills Producer: @lilyduffield @lxlcreative
Stills Creative Team
Costume design: Maureen Vivian
SFX Makeup: @candy_puxe
Makeup: @fernandapazmua
Hair: Jamie McCormick
Photo team:
Digi Op. Shivy Kanagaratnam
First: Matt Lloyd
Second: Emma Pottinger
Retouch/CGI Team:
retoucher: John Martin
CGI artist: Justin Metz
illustrator: Jonathan Hedley