Foxy Bingo Advert

Foxy in Brighton on the first day of the week long shoot
© Daniel Lewis 2013

Back in September I worked on a fun seven day project, photographing some advertising stills for a new TV ad promoting the 2013 Foxy Bingo campaign. The ad was unveiled this week on ITV1, ITV2 and Channel 5 so I am now able to post some of the results.

The whole production had a multi-million pound budget and had attached to it a huge crew of cameramen, sound engineers, gaffers and technicians, as well as a couple of hundred extras that accompanied the production roadshow all over the UK. We commenced in Brighton and moved swiftly onto Liverpool, Blackpool, Newcastle, Scotland, London and finishing up in Stone Henge at the end of the week.

The concept of the ad was that Foxy was travelling around the UK on his bingo bus, picking up all kinds of people on his ‘magical mystery tour’ to the sound of Hot Chocolate’s ‘I Believe in Miracles’.

I had a lot of fun shooting this and was left to my own devices, which was a mixed blessing in that I could go where I wanted within reason, but on the other hand didn’t have much say in setting up the shots, as time was limited. In other words it meant I had to blend into the background and shoot the action on the go while the cameras were rolling, which was a big challenge, but one I relished. My photo-journalistic training was invaluable for this type of work.

Considering we shot this in September you would’ve thought the weather might have behaved, but this being the UK, we were unsurprisingly let down. In fact I’ve never know such a wet week on an assignment and at times the conditions meant putting the cameras away. But we got through it in the end.

I had to get a strong image from each set up so that the pictures could tie in with the ad, including individual portraits of the characters that feature during the 40 sec ad, as well as the shorter TV spots.

Probably my favourite shot from the week was in Brighton when I did for once have a bit of creative control over a shot. While the crew set up near the beach I shot some cool hero shots with Foxy himself swinging off a classic old carousel. The Foxy character is made more lifelike by a very expensive headpiece, that forms complex expressions, controlled by two expert puppeteers

The final TV ad can be found here.

Below I’ve included some of the highlights:

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