Objective

Handball is a minority sport in Britain that was about to be on television in front of the largest domestic audience it would ever get. The film's job was to make the sport feel like an event before anybody had seen it played, part of the Partner A Dream campaign, made in preparation for London 2012.

Stock crowd noise and library music would have made it look like every other aspirational sports advert. The sport had to sound like itself.

Creative response

The soundscape was atmospheric music with effects manipulated from captured sound, the recordings from the shoot processed and rebuilt rather than replaced by a library. The squeak, the impact and the breath are the actual sport; the music sits under them rather than over them.

Doing it that way is slower than dropping in stock. It is also the only way the audio matches the picture frame for frame, which is what makes a low-budget film feel like a broadcast one.

Results

Tim Allison, Director

The film is still online.

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