FORD PUMA ST 'READS CORNERS'

Car shoots are always great fun and often have their own unique set of challenges - and what made this one even more interesting was trying to find a way to carry out intensive location scouting, both aerial and on the ground, at the height of the pandemic. The script called on us to find the letters, P U M A S T spelt out in the topography and terrain of the landscape seen from above but as travel was restricted, we had to conduct the majority of the pre-production scouting via Google Earth. We knew Mallorca was going to give us our principle destination as we had a number of cyclists in the team who knew the terrain of Sa Calobra and Soller from various cycling adventures and it would give us many of our characters. The island also provides a sparkling urban city in Palma for our car beauty night shots, as well as all the crews, toys and expertise we needed - precision drivers, a Russian Arm, heavyweight Octocopters and much more.

We scouring the landscape of the island on Google Earth, until we pinpointed the exact spots, and then sent a Location Scout out with a drone to recce our findings. Only one letter was eluding us - 'A'. We moved our search back to London and found the perfect landmark - The Royal Exchange in the City, which when viewed from above created the perfect 'A". But unable to fly drones in one of the most densely populated areas of London, we needed to find another way to get above it. We found it on the rooftop of the Leadenhall Building, aka, 'The Cheesegrater', one of London's tallest skyscrapers.

Directed by Steve Cope, a master of in-camera VFX and visual storytelling, we shot over two full days and one evening on a rooftop 225 meters above London.

Click here for Behind The Scenes images from the shoot.

Director: Steve Cope Cinematographer: August Jakobsson

Editor: Phil Currie @ STITCH Agency: AMV BBDO

Service: Palma Pictures Creative Director: Martin Lorine