‍The Brief
Social Bull Media were approached by Entain on behalf of Ladbrokes Casino to bring their vision for an entertaining game show based on red balloons to life.

The Pre-production

We knew we wanted to create a concept that centred around the simple red balloon and we set about compiling a list of our favourite party games and ideas that we thought would work well on camera, which we narrowed down to six and then finally settled on our final three, 'The Big Balloon Drop', 'Pop Til You Stop' and 'Shooting Gallery'.

We knew the games would be fun but we wanted an event to make the games feel even more epic, so we enlisted the help of our friends at JEM Live who came to us with a proposal to build an arena centring around a custom branded MMA cage, which we definitely felt the audience would engage with. We settled on the nightclub Brixton Electric as our venue which would allow us to take advantage of the lighting and dark environment that was already there to play to our arena theme.

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Two weeks before the shoot we took a visit over to JEM Live HQ where we were given a first look of what the mechanics our games would look like, this is when we really knew that this campaign would be a success. Any thoughts that the games might be too simple were quickly gone after our first attempt at the Big Balloon Drop and we knew that Shooting Gallery would be a hit from the smiles on our faces after hitting the target a couple of times.

We then set about finding talent that could bring extra life to our vision. We'd previously worked with Stevo The Madman on another project and he was the first person that came to mind to host our game show, his high energy and humour would be perfectly balanced with the legendary voice of commentator Barry Davies. Together they provided a blend of entertainment, but that this was a serious game show where there was money to be won.

With our production ready, we worked with Ladbrokes Casino to find the contestants to take part in our wonderful challenges and once we had our final 12 we were ready to go.

The Shoot

Filming took place over two days in Brixton, we arrived early on day one where the set for Shooting Gallery was already being put in place with our two large LED screens being rigged and our giant red target hung. Our contestants had five balloons filled with paint and they had to try and hit the various targets which had different values.

With the mess that would be caused from the red paint, we didn't have the opportunity to do this more than once so the pressure was on us to get it right, so after a quick test and some incredible pizza we began filming our first two sets of contestants.

We had five camera people which included a jib operator on the shoot to ensure that we had all the angles covered and several GoPros that ended the day covered with the splatter of red paint. At the end of day one, we immediately began the process of changing the set for our second day which is where our MMA cage would take centre stage for our final two challenges.

Coming into the second day, we knew we had a hectic schedule having to film two of the three episodes in one day so we knew that everything had to run smoothly to ensure that we were able to finish on time as the venue was hosting a gig in the evening. This meant there wasn't any room for overrunning! Our incredible team managed everything perfectly and we were privileged to be working with a large team of talented people that allowed us to capture a massive amount of content in a short amount of time without sacrificing on quality.

As soon as the shoot was over, we retreated to our makeshift production office to begin the process of transferring our footage off of our cameras and packing down our set. The giant sumo suits just about fitted in our small car of equipment which was to be returned to Social Bull Media HQ.‍

The Post-production

It was a tight turnaround for the first version of the edit, but having had so many open conversations with the client and the production team before the shoot, this made our lives easier in the edit due to the understanding of what we both wanted to achieve from each episode, this kept changes to a minimum.

We focussed on Reels predominantly for our cut downs on this campaign, which we believed would have greater reach for the type of content thatwe were creating. The game show format was perfect for short clips that viewers could watch multiple times. We played on the nostalgic feel that all our games had from the children's parties we attended when we were younger. Hit Netflix show Squid Game was also released at the same time as our videos, so there was a lot of talk about challenges and nostalgia at the time. We even used a Squid Game sound on one of the Reels which helped it to perform well. Brilliant timing!

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The Reaction

We're thrilled with the positive comments the series has received. It was a great success on both Ladbrokes' own channels as well as Stevo The Madman's personal social channels with notable comments from LadBaby and Lisa Maffia. We believe Social Bull Media gave the simple idea the scale of production it deserved and the results have proved us right.

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