BACK TO ALL NEWS

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

Early concept mockups for the 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

Click image for a BTS Video on the Mastercard Shoot

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

BACK TO ALL NEWS