How 4Creative ‘wrong-footed the viewer’ with new Paralympics spot

The campaign was revisited in 2016 for Rio as ‘We’re the Superhumans’ before becoming ‘Super.Human’ for the 2020 games.

Moving on from ‘uncomfortable’ feelings

Today, there are different expectations from people with disabilities and disabled competitors, which were already taking root in 2020. “There had been more comments from journalists and the disabled community feeling uncomfortable, which was why we smashed the word ‘Super’ for the Tokyo campaign. It was Channel 4 saying, ‘We hear you,’” says Atkin.

“But we were still in danger of ‘othering’ Paralympians and people with disabilities further, so it was the right time to move away from the concept completely,” she adds.

The potentially problematic nature of the older ads is that they lean too heavily on the idea of placing Paralympic athletes on a pedestal for overcoming their disabilities in some way.

The new film, ‘Considering What?,’ goes out of its way to show that Paralympians battle against forces of gravity, friction and time rather than against their disabilities and that it is this which singles them out as world-class athletes rather than anything else.

The storytelling in the film has several layers and introduces forces of physics as embodied characters. Gravity is a cackling, shirtless man sitting in an armchair, pint in hand, as objects around him uproot. Gravity then unforgivingly hurls wheelchair rugby player Aaron Phipps to the floor.

We’re introduced to a similar conceit with friction represented by a boy racer doing donuts in a car as cyclist Sarah Story is hurled across a track, while sprinter Emmanuel Oyinbo-Coker loses ground as the embodied persona of time looks on from the crowd.

As the film continues, a host of athletes star. The scenes are juxtaposed with the unintentionally patronizing comments of viewers who say things such as, “He’s incredible for someone like that” and “They’re so brave.”

‘Alternative visual language’

The other notable layer is the aesthetic and the feeling of the film: dark and claustrophobic. Atkin acknowledges that there’s “an alternative visual language,” which felt right “as we were making a Channel 4 sports ad, not a sports ad”. The idea of this “magical realism” approach was to “slightly wrong-foot the viewer, so they don’t know what’s coming next,” she adds.

The brief for the new ad was born out of research that revealed that 59% of viewers tuned in to Paralympic events to see competitors “overcome” their disabilities, according to Atkin, who says, “This just compounds the idea that there’s a problem the athletes need to get over. You start to realize that a lot of problems around disability are created by society.”

‘There is jeopardy in all sport’

To this end, the new approach looks to understand that “there is jeopardy in all sport,” says Atkin, who adds: “These competitors are battling what any athlete battles. Only millimeters divide the greatest athletes, so the idea of the forces of nature became an interesting area to explore.”

The sequences with athletes were mainly shot on the track at Crystal Palace National Sports Centre in south London, which the creative team was able to make feel like Paris by “exaggerating the scale of the stadium,” according to Atkin. “We were even calling it Crystal Paris.”

Although she is excited about the release of the film and pleased with the new direction, she is also proud of the legacy of the old campaigns. “We’ve definitely thought about the legacy of those while making this one and their impact can’t be overstated. They are phenomenally well-made and I think the Rio one is one of the most shared Olympics ads ever.”

‘Considering What?’ will be first broadcast this evening on Channel 4, just before the start of Celebrity Gogglebox, while simultaneously airing across the broadcaster’s other channels.