ANZ summer cricket campaign

Bat For Your Cap, hit Trent Boult for a virtual 6 and go in the draw to join the BLACKCAPS in England.

ANZ came to Satellite with this idea for their summer cricket campaign. The idea was, Trent Boult would deliver a fast bowl at you on your computer screen, and you could use your phone as a bat to hit the ball... that's where it all began. Over a series of meetings and workshops we developed a solution that would work on TV, in-stadium (with 2 versions) and on the internet as a website and an ad banner.

We called it Bat For Your Cap.

Storyboards

Before we did anything else we needed to create the visual assets for the dual-screen game. The talent was booked, so the storyboards for the film shoot were first priority. Working with the description of the game, we quickly moved into sketching out the shots we'd need to capture. 

The footage

The film shoot ended up happening over two separate sessions, one with Trent Boult to capture the bowling sequence, then a separate one with Grant Elliott to capture the game introduction and instructions.

Some clever editing enabled the footage to be cut into a seamless sequence where Grant lays down the challenge and passes the ball to Trent as he walks back for his run up. Then Trent delivers the fast bowl.

Seeing as the whole thing was shot in a studio, we needed to rotoscope all the footage frame by frame, clean up some unwanted sponsorship on the uniforms, insert our fabricated cricket oval background and prepare the output for multiple delivery mediums.

The build

While the footage was being crafted by the editing team, we had the creative studio working up the over-all look and feel for the game logo and interface, and the development team started on the architecture.

The backend and admin was built using PHP Symfony4 and then once we finished the API, we built the other game play software. After Effects was used to compile the footage and layer the onscreen graphics over the top. Adobe Air was used to create a crowd game and a single player game for the big screen at the stadiums throughout the country. A special edit was created for a TV ad on SKY TV and two versions were built for the internet (an always-on website at batforyourcap.co.nz and web banner ad for NZHerald, Stuff and ESPNcricinfo.com).

Lastly, we built native iOS and Android apps enabling the user to register and use their phone as a cricket bat. Working with the sensors within the phones, we calibrated the various possible hit outcomes by detecting the acceleration and direction of the swing along with the timing and technique of the user.