With a 72.3% Hispanic population, 57.8% of them immigrants, Miami is one of America’s most diverse cities. In “MIAMI TIME,” we wanted to show how Inter Miami CF is more than a sports team, but a symbol to the people of Miami. Home playoff games become city wide events: opportunities for the entire city to come together and celebrate their home town. For the people of Miami, Inter Miami CF represents more than a soccer team, but their home, diversity, and culture, which is exactly what we wanted to capture through our commercial spot. Similar to the Miami community, the team itself is comprised of players from Argentina, Honduras, Spain, and several other Spanish-speaking countries throughout the world. We juxtaposed shots of the team members intensely preparing for the game in the locker room with fans stopping in their tracks, from over-flowing cafecitos to burning Asado on the grill, to enjoy “Miami Time,” presenting both the responsibility weighing on the team’s shoulders and the importance of a playoff game for the IMCF fans.
We worked closely with Inter Miami CF to tell a story showcasing what the team means to the city of Miami. With only a short amount of time to execute the project – only two days to shoot – we had to find locations, actors, and game footage fast to tell a comprehensive story that properly represented Miami’s love for their home team. We knew we wanted to have the spot jump back and forth between the players preparing for the game and the people of Miami abandoning their posts to watch, but who or what those scenes of Miami life would be were up for debate. After lots of editing down and minor budget constraints, we decided that focusing on families, restaurants, and super fans would be the most fun to execute and carry the point across effectively. While each of these “scenes” only consisted of a few shots, we had to find multiple locations in a day’s time that looked different, yet unique enough to be quickly recognized as Miami.
Having already established a strong relationship with the team through prior commercial spots, we knew we had access to the players, arena, and equipment, but we still had to make it feel completely new. We executed this with constant camera movement, time remapping, and, of course, presenting the team’s beloved head coach Gerardo “Tata” Martino working calculatedly in his office. We also knew we wanted at least one main action shot for the spot, so we choreographed a dramatic kick with Forward/Midfielder Robert Taylor, blending dynamic camera and talent movement with VFX to give the kick a puff of pink smoke. All of this climaxed to our hero shot of Lionel Messi, Sergio Busquets, Luis Suarez, and Jordi Alba preparing to enter the field, a shot we knew had to be perfected in a short amount of time and get audiences excited to watch the game.
We also used stock footage for the opening location jumps, but went in with a special effects team to make the footage blend in seamlessly with the rest of our footage and mise-en-scène. For this opening in particular, we wanted to showcase the “3:05 MIAMI TIME” as not just a local event, but illustrating the expanding fandom of the team all over the world. We also took footage from previous games and recolored/edited them to feel fresh and current with our own footage.
The shoot was an ambitious challenge to execute, but through the strong collaboration between 6DEGREES Films and Inter Miami CF, we were able to shoot everything we wanted, exactly how we wanted, and in only a couple days time with a fast turn-around. It was truly amazing how Miami’s passion for their team and city made putting this spot together seamless.
View Behind The Scenes Footage here: https://next.frame.io/share/da103cdb-b892-49bf-a3eb-bc9a05e897fd/view/f4f4f17f-954f-44e9-acff-da441563d66c
After spending all that work putting this spot together in a short amount of time, we were able to get it broadcasted on the jumbotron in Chase Stadium. It’s recently become one of 6DEGREES most liked videos on social media with numbers still growing. As a fairly recent release, it hasn’t taken off virally online or specifically in the city of Miami, but it has made the rounds in sports advertising and production company circles all around the world. With Lionel Messi having joined the team, Inter Miami CF has reached a much wider audience across the globe, bringing a large swath of European and South American attention to our commercial. That being said, it still has lots of time to grow and popularize in Miami as it plays consistently on the jumbotron, so we’re hoping it will start to have more of an impact on those people in the near future.
