Hotspur and Argyle

A new Broadway Musical from Sting, The Last Ship, is to be launched with this elegant animated film from Blind. Presented with an open brief – akin to one for a music video – Blind’s objective was to tell a beautiful visual story that is emotionally tethered to the musical. After reading the play’s script, they developed a narrative about the father son relationship spanning multiple generations. The red ship is the visual thread connecting each scene and neatly linking back to the production’s logo.
The agency was SpotCo with creative from Stacey Lieberman Prince and Darren Cox and the agency producer was Tom Coppola. Music, unmistakably, came from Sting.

Click here to view the film.

BBC2’s ‘Inside No 9’, directed by David Kerr, is getting the kind of rave reviews not seen in TV comedy since the same director brought the multi award-winning ‘Fresh Meat’ into the world. Written by and starring the legendary Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton of ‘League Of Gentlemen’ fame, each of the six half hour films take place in a different house with number nine on its front door. ‘Finely crafted’ gush the Sunday Times, ‘magnificent’ says the Times, ‘wickedly funny’ enthuses the Observer, ‘deliciously dark’ effervesces the Mail On Sunday and ‘one of the TV highlights of the year’ eulogises Heat, giving it a maximum five stars. And the raving’s not confined to the press, none other than David Walliams has tweeted ‘this is the best TV show I have seen in ages…’ while Reece Shearsmith proclaims ‘the man responsible for making all our “No 9′s” is the wonderful @davidkerrtv… a joy to work with’. We humbly concur.

Huge excitement reigns here at Hotspur & Argyle with the arrival of brilliant Danish Director Rune Milton. Rune developed his considerable narrative skills as an editor at online agency Framfab before going on to produce and direct his own stuff and moving to award winning agency Stahl Hjaltelin as a creative director in 2006. He arrives in the UK with a range of great commercials for brands like Nike, Microsoft and Nescafe under his belt and his unique visual gifts and understated humour are already causing a stir in London.

Martin Aamund has been busy with a plethora of international spots of late, including this whimsical piece for o2. Expect lycra, LEDs and a cycling astronaut. Click below to take a look…

A secret boot camp where a battalion of anti-cooking chefs are put through their paces is the setting for David Kerr’s new campaign for Just Eat, the online takeaway food ordering service. The sergeant major figure is one Mr Mozzarella who has his troops destroying pots and pans and detonating microwaves as they train for their mission to eradicate home cooking once and for all.

The ads, for VCCP, were shot in the desert outside Almeria in southern Spain, where Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns were made, and feature photography from DP Alex Melman and production design from Jonathan Lee. Editor was Simon Willcox at Loaded Dice, sound design took place at Jungle and Paul Harrison at Finish was the colourist. Martin Galton wrote the campaign, Danny Fleet produced for Hotspur & Argyle and Ellie Gibb took charge for VCCP.

Currently whipping up a storm in promo land is this pulsating new video by Richard Swarbrick for China Rats’ N.O.M.O.N.E.Y .

Described by Promo News as ‘ingenious, brilliantly executed and mesmerising’ the video is a personal project that’s been taking shape over fully fifteen months.

Richard explains: ‘The idea came to me when when I first heard the song – I was shooting another video for China Rats and during a lunch break the band played me a demo of N.O.M.O.N.E.Y. At the time I’d been working on a series of stop frame animations made out of found objects (bits of string, buttons, bottle caps etc.) and I immediately had the idea of doing something made out of money. At home I had a ‘man draw’ full of coins so I set about working on animation tests.

I filmed the band performing the song in a rehearsal studio in Putney and cut together a live action edit which I used as a basis for the animation. As I sent sections of animated coins to the editor Simon Hargood we began to realise that we would need a few other animation styles and techniques in order to hold people’s attention for a two minute video. The idea of using banknotes seemed like a natural progression and blending collage with hand painted elements allowed us to add some detail.’

Richard’s team of animators consisted of Eva Wagner, Hannah Wroe, Lucy Watkins, Amy Philpott and Lorcan Kerr, son of Hotspur & Argyle director David Kerr.

Here at Hotspur & Argyle we like art and certain among us like football just as much. So we’ve have decided to put on an exhibition of football art. It’s called Fantasista and to help us tell the world all about it, Richard Swarbrick, who’s work features in the show, has made this exquisite film Moments In Football. It features some of the most celebrated scenes in the history of the game, drawn in Richard’s trademark rotoscopic style onto circular papers and then, using a record player, spun below the mirrors of a praxinoscope. Edited by Ruth Hegarty of the Assembly Rooms, we think it’s the very embodiment of football and art. Eva Wagner assisted Richard and music is by Keith Kenneff.

Baggio by Zoran Lucic

The film’s opening and closing sequences were inspired by works from fellow Fantasista artists, Steve Welsh’s ‘The Cruyff Turn’ and Zoran Lucic ‘s ‘Baggio’. Among the 19 other artists at the exhibition are Sir Peter Blake and Otto Li. For more details, visit the Fantasista website.

Cruyff Turn by Steve Welsh

There are few bigger events in American sport than the NBA basketball finals. So we are rather proud to announce that, this year, ESPN are marking the occasion with this stunning Richard Swarbrick film of great moments from Finals history.

As with Richard’s previous iconic sporting pieces, each frame of the animation was crafted by hand using a combination of techniques. After an experimental phase using inks, paints and paper, the bulk of the drawing was done using a Wacom tablet. The palette in each shot is limited to the three or four colours from the relevant team jerseys and the background colours aim to accentuate the different eras. Among the basketball legends featured are Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, Magic Johnson and LeBron James.

The music is Mint Julep’s ‘Save Your Season’, the live action edit was cut by Simon Hargood of The Assembly Rooms and Richard’s animation assistants were Hannah Wroe, Eva Wagner and Estha Ajibade. Hotspur & Argyle’s producers were Danny Fleet and Victoria Lynn. Click on the image above to view the film.

The first of Theo Delaney’s new Unibet commercials for Albion, featuring former Wimbledon champion Goran Ivanisevic, is on air (and has already bagged Campaign’s Ad Of The Day). The campaign, set to accompany a year’s worth of top quality sport, strikes a thoughtful tone in contrast to the shouty bookies’ commercials that so often feature in the football ad breaks. Instead, we hear from a string of ‘Armchair Experts’ imparting their considerable knowledge and dropping in some salient betting advice. Always seated in the bespoke Unibet armchair, the experts are filmed against a variety of rugby, cricket and tennis club backdrops. As well as Ivanisevic, cricket legend Sir Ian Botham and former British Lions rugby captain Gavin Hastings feature as Unibet ‘ambassadors’.

The Armchair Experts idea was the brainchild of Albion’s senior creative Aaron Hinchion, the DP was Fraser Taggart and Simon Hargood of the Assembly Rooms was the editor. Head of film Petrina Kilby produced for Albion while Adam Lyne took charge for Hotspur & Argyle. Click on the above image to view the spot.