Making movies inside a Sprinter?!

RAPP presented us with a challenging yet brilliantly clever brief for Mercedes Benz’ Sprinter 30th Anniversary. To highlight the brand’s longstanding presence on film sets, we created six idents each focussed on a film genre and centred around a clever reveal motif showcasing the endless customisation possibilities inside the Sprinter van.

Crafting cinema-level scenes confined to a fixed physical space for a legacy brand made this a dream brief and one that India Harris was super excited to be on board for. The multiple film themes allowed her to play to her strengths in narrative world building which was coupled with familiar archetypal movie characters.

We explored various ways of shooting at the pitch stage: location vs studio, robot arm vs sticks, inside the actual van vs building a set to match the interior space. In the end everything was shot in the van, with more traditional grip and in the parking lot of London Film Studios.

An ambitious schedule set out two units separating the hero film alongside stills and the other unit dedicated to the idents, across 2 days with a pre-light. Also captured on the pre-light day with India, Joel Hördegård (DoP), Luciano Consolini (Photographer) and core crew were the exterior van shots at a nearby private highway in the first half of the day.

Efficiencies needed to be made in every department to make the schedule work and problem solving skills were tested for all HoDs to ensure that quality was upheld. The success of the shoot was down to an incredibly dedicated, collaborative and thorough crew, lead by Teepee to produce a milestone commercial.