Signal

Orbit had the best coverage in the country and nobody felt it. They wanted a film about connection, not about masts.

A 90-second brand film for TV and cinema, three 20-second edits.

The 90-second film is one shot from start to finish: a call that begins in a kitchen, passes through a hospital corridor and a train, and ends on a doorstep. The three 20-second edits each keep one of those moments for TV breaks and pre-roll.

Because the shorter edits cannot cut away, each one was planned as its own take within the long one, with a natural start and end built into the choreography.

One take, four locations built side by side in a studio, and three weeks of rehearsal to make the handovers invisible.

The four sets stood in a ring around the camera's path, with walls that slid away as it passed. Actors, crew and stagehands rehearsed the route until the movement looked like nothing at all.

We shot 23 takes over two days and used the eighteenth. The sound, a single phone call that never drops, was recorded live on set and only cleaned in the mix.

Orbit's most liked campaign to date, aired nationally for two seasons.

Viewers wrote in asking how it was done, which turned the making-of into a second, unplanned piece of the campaign.

In Orbit's brand tracking that year, connection replaced coverage as the word people most associated with the company, the change the brief had asked for.