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Where Is Everyone?
📅 This Week’s Topics:
🎭 Where Did All the Crew Go? (Set design, makeup, wardrobe… disappearing fast)
🏎️ Brad Pitt’s F1 Film is Changing the Sponsorship Game
🎖️ Warfare: The Movie That’s Giving a Memory Back
🎢 Content That Makes You Feel It in Your Gut
🎭 WHERE DID ALL THE CREW GO?
The UK is the second biggest film production hub after the US—and they’re starting to feel it.
The crew is aging out.
We’re losing the people who build sets, do wardrobe, apply prosthetics, and handle on-set jobs most people forget exist.
Younger creatives? They’re skipping the trades. Most are heading toward digital tools, freelance gigs, or content creation.
Fewer people are learning the hard skills of working on set. And when the old guard retires, there’s no bench waiting to jump in.
Studios are still making stuff. But soon, they’ll be asking—who’s going to build it?
🏎️ BRAD PITT’S F1 FILM IS A SPONSORSHIP BLUEPRINT
Here’s the setup:
Brad Pitt stars in a $300 million F1 film. The team he drives for? Completely made up.
But the racing is real. The tracks are real. The footage is real.
And brands were climbing over each other to sponsor a fake team.
Why? Because they know the reach. The attention. The audience.
This isn’t traditional product placement—it’s full integration with something people actually want to watch.
What Drive to Survive did for F1, this movie might do for how sponsorships work in film moving forward.
🎖️ WARFARE: THE MOVIE THAT’S GIVING A MEMORY BACK
Warfare drops April 11. And it’s not your average war flick.
Ray Mendoza, a former Navy SEAL, is telling the story of a real mission in Ramadi, 2006.
But this isn’t just for the audience. It’s for Elliot—his teammate from that mission, who was badly injured and lost his memory.
This film is Mendoza’s way of giving Elliot back a piece of what he lost.
That’s why the cast didn’t just memorize lines. They trained and lived together for two months—every day, every night—to build something real.
Will Poulter, Kit Connor, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai—they weren’t playing soldiers. They became a unit.
Mendoza didn’t want this to feel real. He wanted it to be real.
No filters. No polish. Just what it was.
🎢 CONTENT THAT MAKES YOU FEEL IT
If you’re making content to sell a product or service, skip the pitch and start with the feeling.
This TikTok from ESPN gets it:
👉 Watch it
Two strangers go base jumping. It’s shot on a 360 cam so you’re right there with them—from the nerves before the jump to the second their feet leave the ground.
You feel the moment.
That’s the stuff people remember.
That’s the stuff that sells.
Beautifully filmed.
We’ll be back next week with more stories worth sharing.
🚀 Until next time,
Reel Basic Team