Paralympic games…The Breakdown

Ahead of the 2024 Paralympic Games, UK broadcaster, Channel 4, came to us with a mission: to change the narrative around disability and sport by taking aim at patronising language and position one truth as undeniable. Paralympians are elite, world class athletes.   

 Tasked with creating four OOH posters to accompany their award winning Considering What? campaign, we needed to draw attention to four paralympic disciplines and the world-class British athletes preforming at the top of their game.  

The concept proved challenging, originally requiring multiple shoot locations. We proposed using CGI environments and a single, controllable shoot location and sourced a studio space perfect for the task.   

Paralympians never shy away from a challenge, and neither do we. Come shoot day, we were met with the complexities inherent in shooting athletes with disabilities and rose to the challenge. 

To accurately capture the grit and graft required for competing at their level, we needed the athletes to be genuinely competing. Meaning that the weightlifter is lifting real weights and the British wheelchair basketball team are pushing, tipping and careering their way around an invisible court (to be added later in post). Not only did we need to capture this from every angle using unique camera rigs set-ups, but we needed to record the action while keeping each athlete’s identity obscure – not yet knowing who would qualify and represent TeamGB.  

After two days shooting in the studio, we had all the ingredients to create some medal worthy OOH, heading into post production to create realistic sporting surfaces in CGI.  

We were proud to see the campaign win multiple awards, including a Bronze Shark in Photography for Print & Outdoor, Creative Excellence for Campaign’s In-House Agency Awards, Excellence awards in two categories for Marketing Week along with being shortlisted for Creative Review’s 2025 awards.  

But our favourite part?The prop helmet we bought for the wheelchair racing shoot was kept by the athlete and used during her Olympic race. That’s worth more than gold to us.