How Sam Pilling Pulled Off an Epic Equine Shoot for Lloyds

adam&eveDDB has upped the ante in a new spot for Lloyds Bank, which sees the iconic black horse multiplied into a hundred-strong herd.

The dramatic ad, which broke on Easter Sunday, builds on previous campaigns which have featured the bank's equine symbol galloping through labour wards and key moments in history and evokes a fairytale feel with the story of a young girl woken in the middle of the night to bear witness to some unnamed extraordinary event. Full of excitement, she leads an entire village down to the nearby beach as dawn breaks. In the distance, a harass (yes, that is the collective noun) of horses appears, thundering along the shore before stopping to greet both young and old.

Below, Pulse Films director Sam Pilling talks us through the unique challenges of equine casting, working with the tides and holding your nerve in front of an unbridled horse...

What appealed to you about the script?

I loved the narrative structure, following one character’s journey, and the child-like sense of adventure that the story had. Coupled with the intrigue of what is taking place, where these people are going and why they are going there.  It felt like a clever way of bringing the viewer on the journey with the lead character. The words jumped right off the page and I could see how the film would play out right from that first read.

At the first meeting with [creative directors] James [Gillham] and Graham [Cappi], it was immediately clear that we were all on the same page in terms of the visual approach.  We talked about films like Midnight Special, Super 8, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T, and the idea of telling the story from a child’s perspective. 

The Lloyds Bank black horse is iconic, and their previous campaigns have been incredibly visually striking.  Getting to build on that, with a story that involved a whole pack of horses, and the potential of how that could look, was also hugely appealing to me. 

The film evokes the wild horses of the Camargue, what was the inspiration behind your treatment? 

A harass of horses galloping en-masse is a really powerful image; they’re beautiful animals to capture on film. The horses on the beach is the climax of our story, and the purpose of our journey through the countryside, so for me it was about making this already stunning visual as magical and spell-binding as possible. To do that, I wanted to film the horses early in the morning with soft, directional sunlight, and positioned right on the water’s edge, so they’d kick up as much surf as possible as they thundered down the beach. It was also important that this moment felt real. Yes, cinematic and beautiful but with a slightly off the cuff, naturalistic sense to it too. 

I felt that to get the right balance of power and beauty, we needed to film the horses in extremes. Combining expansive aerial shots that gave the scene scale and a sense of spectacle, with more intimate close-ups of the horses' pounding hooves and splashing water to put the viewer right in the middle of the action.

How did you approach production?  

I wanted the story to have a clear sense of colour progression, subtly shifting from dark to light as the journey progresses. Breaking the film down into three main colour themes, we had the opening with inky blue night skies, silhouettes and beams of white torchlight, then first-light skies shifting from purple blue, to light blue-grey, then the climax on the beach with brighter blue skies and yellow peach morning sunlight. 

We filmed over five nights, trying to capture dusk and dawn as many times as was feasible. This meant our window of useable light was quite restricted, which in turn affected how we approached certain moments and performances.  The shooting schedule constantly evolved, taking in to consideration the changing weather, light conditions and the optimal times to film the horses (and humans (!).  There were few head scratch moments between myself, DP Pat Scola, 1^st A.D David Letham and producer Arlene McGann, but we got there in the end. 

Drawing from the experience of the SKY F1 commercial, I knew exactly how I wanted to film the horses.  We’d worked closely with the Stabileye guys Paul and David on that project, where we achieved some incredibly dynamic close-ups of the horses galloping.  I wanted to be even more ambitious on this, and I knew that it was imperative that they were involved.  We had them hanging off a quad bike, flying along the water’s edge alongside the pack of horses galloping at 70kmh alongside them, resulting in some incredible close-up photography. 

For the aerials, our horse-master Wayne had worked with Sam and Ryan at Ariel Camera in the past and they were all very comfortable with how the camera and horses would work safely together.  We used a Russian Arm crew for the tracking mid shots of the full pack of horses, and it was weirdly reminiscent of filming car running footage (although a whole lot more fun). 

Tell us a bit about the shoot – why did you decide to work with real horses, what were the logistics of casting and how did you get them to perform for the camera? How much of the spot was captured in-camera versus post? 

It was never an option not to film real horses, and having filmed them before, it was one of those rare times where we knew exactly what had to happen to achieve the shots that we all wanted.  Be that the camera, tracking and grip equipment needed, the amount of time each reset would take, the fencing and corrals required, the distance and speeds the horses would be able to gallop and so on.  There were added complications to filming this on a beach, the biggest issue being the tides.   

Creatively, the tone of the spot is quite naturalistic and we wanted the story to feel real.  That meant that the horses, and our actors’ interactions with them, had to be genuine.  

Casting the horses was tricky. Essentially we needed horses that could gallop purposefully and quickly along the beach, but that would be gentle enough to interact with the cast. Ultimately, it came down to the temperament of specific horses, and we ended up using a combination of thoroughbred and quarter horses. Some of which, such as Arnie and Awesome, were owned by Wayne and had been specifically trained in ‘liberty work’ [unrestrained by bridles or ropes] and others that were slightly more wild. 

What was the biggest challenge?

Capturing the human and horse interactions – specifically the moment our hero and horse first come together.  I had always envisaged our camera positioned behind our hero as her horse (and the other horses) slow down and walked towards her. I wanted to do this for real as opposed to filming it with separate passes and then compositing the multiple takes.  It was important to me that it felt organic and intimate, and was shot with a floating hand-held camera.  I knew that there would be a genuine sense of magic for our actor to experience it for real and for us to capture that on camera.  

Pat and I worked closely with Wayne to work out the best way of getting the shot, which involved creating a sort of cordoned off funnel or runway for ‘Arnie’ the horse to be released from one end, then positioning Wayne behind our hero actor, Chilli (and our camera) at the other. Wayne would then slow Arnie down at just the right moment by bringing two horse crops together in an “X” shape. Needless to say, this took multiple takes to get right!

It was clear that we would have to add some background horses into the shot in post, but I wanted to capture as many horses in the foreground as possible, so little by little we worked the shot outwards, adding more horses and funnels on either side of Arnie and Chilli. 

During production we had a test day with Wayne and Arnie, both for me and for Chilli. For the shot to work it was imperative that Chilli was comfortable with Arnie and vice versa. I must confess that when Arnie came bearing towards me on the test day, it took every ounce of self-control not to step backwards, rather than step forwards and stroke him. Arnie is of course confidently trained at liberty (and a gentle giant) but an unbridled horse coming right at you is still fairly daunting! Chilli was incredibly brave and I think her and Arnie had a real connection by the end of the shoot.