Hovis: Farmer's Race

We've just had a great weekend of sport with the - slightly controversial - Grand National and some thrilling golf at the Masters.  And coming this weekend is the London Marathon but here, Hovis, Dougal Wilson and Dare Lodon serve up what is surely the race of the year.

“I liked the idea of farmers trying to behave like athletes.” When asked what initially attracted him to the script for Hovis’ new TV spot, Blink director Dougal Wilson gives an answer that’s short, sweet and to the point. And why not? Who wouldn’t like to see farmers acting like athletes? This spot, through Dare London, starts by beautifully depicting a large group of farmers lining up to take part in a race. As the starting shotgun goes off, they drag their Barbour-clad, Wellington boot-and flat-cap-wearing selves across fields and fences, as they race towards the finish line, and the end line ‘it’s good to have a bit of healthy competition’.

Shot in the Peak District over three days, Wilson says that the cast were mainly from around the Manchester area and, while a few were real farmers, most were good character actors, “quite a few of whom had been in Coronation Street”. Wilson says that the shoot itself was less challenging than he had anticipated, with certain areas he expected to be fairly complex, actually proving to be rather straightforward. “We had to move some sheep into a shot which I thought would be quite complicated,” explains Wilson, “but Marshall (the farmer who owned the land and farm on which the ad was shot) was pretty expert at moving them around with his quad bike.

There’s a stunt where a man falls through a dry stone wall, which I also anticipated was going to be difficult – we had polystyrene stones made to match the real ones, so we could make a section that was fall-through-able. But the stuntman had been in the SAS, so was quite hard and ended up just running through the real wall, which looked a lot better.” dE