A commercial aiming to bring to life what South Africans love best – their sport – needs to strike exactly the right tone. In this case, fans were depicted attending and supporting games, including South Africa’s three most-loved sporting codes. With appearances by major sports stars (including Schalk Burger and Graeme Smith) there was enough to get the average South African sports fan’s blood pumping, but the ad needed several layers of components.

For the atmosphere of each stadium (and sporting code) to truly come to life, what was required was strong stock footage that provided an authentic backdrop of actual game footage, and specific stadium settings, so specific stock footage shots played an important part in creating this spot.

Agency, Ogilvy, and director, Giaco Angelini, entrusted the challenge of finding clips with exactly the right attributes to Greatstock Motion (previously known as Stock Options). Some of these were specific game highlights, and others meant sourcing shots which would lend themselves to seamless compositing of stock and custom-shot elements. But that wasn’t the only complication: “Not only was this a complex job, requiring very specific clips, but those clips also needed to be in HD,” comments Margi Sheard, managing director at Greatstock.

This was the first commercial research job undertaken in HD at M-Net and the positive results demonstrate that, in the right hands, a stock footage solution can always be found even in HD.