Lean Mean Fighting machine have recently undertaken a monumental shoot for Emirates of 14.40 HOURS NON-STOP - the exact time it takes to fly from Dubai to Sao Paulo.

The agency have even submitted an entry into the GUINESS BOOK OF RECORDS for the "longest commercial in history".

The director considered crazy enough to take on this 14 hour marathon was Annex Film's Kit Lynch-Robinson, who recently shot the Rugby World Cup sponsorship idents for Peugeot featured at the top and tail of every game, including the final.

Kit's involvement in the campaign started very early on in the piece. "I was involved through out the scripts development. The script was written and does exist but both lead actor, Fernando, and i felt it would be easier for him if he was speaking from experience rather than trying to learn what was written. The script was used as a subject order, we essentially broke down the time into 15 minute segments - ie fernando could talk about football for 3 x15 minute segments then move on to another subject", said Kit.

Kit and the agency knew that communicating with the lead actor to keep him talking for 14.40 was always going to be the biggest challenge. "Very early on i decided the way i wanted to do this was for real and didn't mind my voice being heard. It almost made it into a documentary and gave it a reason for being. I had a covert walkie talkie linked to the agency who where watching in the gallery room, they had a wireless autocue screen that they could feed stuff to both myself and fernando and we just went form there. There was a lot of tugging on DOP's arm to make him move about as well to change the shot - he then had to sign one handed to the gaffer to adjust the relflectors or kinos - i think it would be funny as a "making of" to see all the crew crawling about, using strange sign language and getting stuck in rooms in shot not being able to move until fernando changes rooms".

Kit summarized the experience, "some hours where easy and flew by, some where like walking backwards through branston pickle high on horse tranquilizers"


Above is a fun 2 minute edit of some highlights of the shoot - it was actually lead actor Fernando's birthday, so he was able to finally celebrate as the end of the gruelling shoot.

For the full monty go to www.nonstopfernando.com where you can watch Fernando talk non-stop for 14 hours and 40 minutes about Brasilian restaurants, literature, Formula 1 drivers, museums, cities, coffee, shopping, culture, music, dancing, soap operas, sumo wrestling, food, cocktails, carnivals, dating, language, architecture, politics, banknotes, holidays, football etc.