The Castaways

The Castaways – Paramount+

The end of 2023 saw a sudden flurry of activity to close out Grizzle’s year, and in the midst of it was this really fun and creative promo that we got to work on alongside the team at Paramount+.

The premiere of their new show, The Castaways, was fast approaching and they were after a dynamic and engaging bit of digital out-of-home media to build hype. The plan was for them to end up on the portrait D6 screens dotted around train stations. We also created a slightly longer version for social which you can see at the top of the page, featuring both Sheridan Smith and co-star Celine Buckens.

The Idea

Our aim was to bring the key art created by the team at Paramount+ to life. They’d created a great scene of the desert island in Photoshop that was already layered up beatifully, but there was an added twist. They wanted us to start deep in the jungle, looking at a terrified Sheridan Smith before zooming all the way out through the trees, coming to rest on the final key art. We had some high framerate footage of Sheridan shot on a bluescreen that we could use, but the rest of the jungle needed to be built from scratch using stock assets.

How it works

We ended up working almost entirely in After Effects, just using the 3D camera and a whole load of 3D layers. Liberal use of stock footage and assets let us recreate some of the static elements of the key art in motion, like the smoke and fire emanating from the crashed plane. We also gave the ocean a makeover to keep the whole frame interesting and eyecatching. The last step was adding a long sweeping camera move that would take us from a close-up on Sheridan through to the final key art, along with the show title and branding.

Below is the less than glamorous side view that shows how it all works behind the scenes.

Bonus

Here it is in situ at Euston Station!