Get Access All Areas with Partycasino and Partypoker's McLaren Racing Partnership
SNAP London today has launched a TV campaign and content series as part of PartyCasino and partypoker’s multiyear partnership with McLaren Racing. The two brands are part of the leading global sports betting and gaming entertainment group, Entain.
Under the creative platform ‘Access’, the TV and content series is part of TTL activity getting fans closer to the world of Formula 1. All activity directs fans to the Access hub, hosted at PartyCasino.com and partypoker.com. On the hub, fans will find behind the scenes content episodes, free to play McLaren games and exclusive competitions to win McLaren experiences.
The intriguing TV ad, directed by Jak Payne of Blink Productions, announces the Access platform. The ‘See the Unseen’ content series, directed by James Lovick of Bang productions, is a series of five exclusive mini-films which take fans behind the scenes of the McLaren Formula 1 team. It features revealing interviews with McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown, McLaren engineers, McLaren pit crew and Formula 1 driver Daniel Ricciardo, answering the questions they’re never normally asked.
Boutique VFX and finishing house Stone Dogs was brought on board during the script stage, working with SNAP LDN and PartyCasino in the weeks running up to the shoot in Bulgaria. With a tight schedule and time difference to navigate, Stone Dogs supervised the shoot virtually from 6am GMT, working with Jak Payne to get as much in camera as possible each day - and ensuring they were on hand to advise on the ambitious and ever-changing production. With the F1 season currently in progress, the team was unable to access a racing car with an engine - and instead organised for an engineer to be shot in a static McLaren. Photoreal CG, including particle and environmental elements, were then added, flying past the car to give the impression of the vehicle moving at high speed. This process was enhanced on the shoot by a giant LCD screen with moving images and additional lighting, whilst Stone Dogs also provided 2D work, including set clean/extensions and wire removal. Stone Dogs called on CG studio Orchard for key elements in the film.
Paris Anatolitis, Entain’s commercial director, said: “McLaren are a team who share our love of innovation and cutting-edge entertainment and we wanted to reflect that same character to in how we promote our partnership. We are really proud that with the Access platform and ‘See the Unseen’ films we have created something for the fans that is genuinely entertaining and insightful.”
Louisa Fielding, managing partner at SNAP London, added: “As a bunch of Formula 1 nuts, we’ve had an absolute blast making this work. It’s really easy in sponsorship to simply badge teams and sports stars, but we wanted to give fans and customers more. So, the Access platform was born. By working closely with the PartyCasino, partypoker and McLaren teams, we’ve been able to create exciting content and experiences that genuinely gets Formula 1 fans closer to the sport and team they love.”
Brian Carbin, co-owner/flame artist at Stone Dogs, comments: “We were excited to get a call from long time collaborators SNAP to help with this project. Fast cars with super slick creative, yes please! With a tight turn around, we got started on the CG aspects straight away as we prepared for the live action elements. In many of the studio scenes we had to give the car the appearance of moving at an extremely high speed by adding atmospheric effects along with giving the tyres and road motion blur and textures you’d expect in a real world environment. These cars top out at nearly 235mph and we rarely dropped below that! We are really proud of what was achieved. Hats off to Jak Payne and Matt Hynds for setting us such a rewarding challenge.”
Martin Cook, managing director at Orchard comments: “It was amazing to work with Dave, Brian and the team at Stone Dogs on quite an unusual project. From a CG point of view, right from the start, we knew we had to approach this slightly differently. The shots had to be as realistic but were set in a completely other-worldly environment for an F1 car. At Orchard, our approach to CG is to keep it simple and produce CG to briefs as efficiently as possible. Each of our artists has experience directing sequences or entire CG projects from concept to delivery. This helps massively on projects like this, as the concept was quite open and left to the artist to visualise. We are really pleased with the final shots and think they add a scope to the overall commercial which was very hard to achieve on these tighter budgets until recently.”
