The Making of Hargreaves Lansdown Ad Chartering 45 Years of British Change

From poll tax protests and brick-sized mobile phones to the birth of the internet and the dawn of artificial intelligence, Hargreaves Lansdown’s latest campaign compresses 45 years of British political and cultural upheaval into a single, propulsive minute.

Conceived by Wonderhood creative directors James Rafter and Myles Vincent, the film is both a celebration of the brand’s longevity and a love letter to British resilience; rooted in factual detail, driven by cinematic momentum.

Shot across London with painstaking practical craft – including replica Downing Street doors, era-authentic props, hand-painted signage and a fleet of vintage vehicles – the film unfolds through a constantly advancing camera that acts as a seamless time machine.

With VFX by Time Based Arts, a textural grade that shifts from 16mm nostalgia to digital clarity, and era-specific sound design that places each moment precisely in time, ‘Helping Britain Invest Through It All’ positions Hargreaves Lansdown as a steady presence through decades of uncertainty, cultural change and market volatility.

Here, James and Myles, together with Stink’s Tom Green, Time Based Arts VFX supervisor Steve Grasso and colourist Simone Grattarola and Runamok’s sound engineer Jon Clarke speak to the process of creating the visually rich campaign.

LBB> The film has a very specific British sensibility: what was the brief and how was the idea shaped around that?

James and Myles> Britishness was key for Hargreaves Lansdown. They’re a British brand and they really are the pioneers of retail investing for the General British public and they’ve been doing it the longest. We thought 45 years of investing knowledge is something to be confident and shout about.

So we went away and listed every bit of British madness, all the twists and turns that have happened since they started. It was a long old list and because the markets are so intrinsically linked to politics, it felt like we could have covered almost anything. The basis of the idea was a simple graphic way to represent the changes the country would ultimately go through.

The tricky part was picking the things that we felt had the biggest effects on the market and the public. That’s really where the Britishness comes in, we wanted every scene to resonate, whether you’re into investing or not.

We wanted to take our audience on a journey through some of the most heated moments in the last 45 years of British history, but without stumbling into a right/wrong/yes/no debate that would break the cinematic journey. Factuality is important but equally, it couldn’t feel like a history lesson.

LBB> Tom, how did you approach the brief?

Tom> This was about showing quintessential British cultural history. And luckily, we were able to shoot it here in London. From the casting, to the props, the costume, the cars, recreating Downing Street on location, all of those things have fed into the feeling of it really being a little snapshot of British cultural identity.

Hargreaves was really keen on technological change so paying particular attention to detail was essential. From the lecterns and microphones changing, we had to review the details of each era closely. Same with the cars and the phones; from a huge brick phone to Nokias, BlackBerrys and iPhones.

There’s some nice old video cameras in there, like the news cameras of the period, they’re all authentic. And all the signs were hand-painted by the art department inspired by street photography from the time. Going through photographic archives served as a truthful visual compass for the feel and look of the campaign.

And the attention to detail in wardrobe was also brilliant.

LBB> The film appears to have been mostly achieved in-camera: how was it created?

James and Myles> We shot for three days between Greenwich and Gray’s Inn road. When we arrived on set the first day they had all the old cars and police vans with what felt like a hundred extras all in wardrobe, ready to be our poll tax protesters and police. It was like stepping back in time.

Stink made two very shiny replica No.10 doors and rebuilt the door frame and brickmoulds on the exterior to be the same as Downing Street. So much was done for real, and we think you can see the quality of that in every frame. Every camera move was planned out and timed perfectly, cue camera operator Myron Mance having to jump into a slow moving, doorless car multiple times before we got it right.

Time Based Art also went to another level on the details, making the transitions seamless and helping guide us from one era to another. They even had to darken every single brick to match the look of No.10 and removed a floor in post to match too.

Tom> My first thought was having a developing, propulsive camera that kind of inexorably moves forward and through the political years, fleetingly meeting characters along the way, but with just enough connection to them to create a strong sense of character and texture of the time.

It was challenging fitting all the fun ideas and characters in 60 seconds. We did a previs with Time Based Arts, who were great, and created an animatic to time each scene. On the day, I worked really closely with my script supervisor, so we knew how many seconds we could spend on each moment and she was hot on the stopwatch.
I wanted the camera to dynamically find a new era all the time - so you're in the ’80s, then ‘89 and the birth of the internet, then into the early ’90s as the police officer takes you into the Poll Tax. I always wanted the new era to emerge at the end of the outgoing shot, so the camera was a kind of seamless time machine!

LBB> How important was the grade in bringing the piece together?

Tom> I wanted it to represent the passing of time. I shot some of the early scenes on 16mm film. The opening sequence is actually in 4:3 ratio, which is intended to evoke the square television you watched the news on back then. As time goes on, the frame expands out to fit more of a 16:9 ratio as we move into the mid/late ’90s of New Labour. So there was more filmic texture and grain at the start, and then it smooths out as we enter into an artificial intelligence era by the end frame, which was always the intention that we leave the audience on a kind of interesting but unknown future and how AI will play a role.

LBB> What sort of considerations did you have to make with regard to the ad's sound design, to make sure the right things were heard so that different eras could be easily placed?

Jon> It was really important to get the treatment of the sound right for each era. This involved using subtle filtering and speaker emulations across the different scenes that helped differentiate the time periods.

Also making sure we used more vintage camera sounds that matched the decades and media FX typical of the time.

Creating different dialogue treatments for the narrative news reports really helped to create more authenticity in each scene so you really feel like it's an '80s news report on a tube TV or a more modern radio talkshow for example.

LBB> What role did VFX play in making the transitions between the different historical periods as seamless as possible?

Steve> During the development stages of the script, we set out to understand what the important narrative beats were, where the camera needed to be, and how much time each scene could afford. There was a lot to fit into this film, and we knew we were locked into a 60-second film, so this was an interesting creative and technical challenge which we were thrilled to take on.

As we began to understand the remit of where the stitches were going to be required, we created a pre-vis of the film alongside Tom and DOP Benoit [Soler] to loosely have a visual reference for the timing of the film.

Alongside the stitches between scenes, we were tasked with changing the facade of the street where the film was shot to black, as well as recreating the rest of the environment to bring us closer to the real Downing Street. This included some significant digital matte painting work, a CG build of the Halls of Justice archways facing Downing Street, and figuring out some stitches that spanned different shooting locations, weather, and time of day.

The previs formed the blueprint that was referenced during the shoot, and having it on hand during production allowed us to navigate the intended stitch points, and what the camera, performance and staging needed to be at each of those moments, the timings each scene needed to hit, and provided a platform to allow us to discuss how to pivot with new creative challenges that arose as we were shooting.

When shooting was wrapped, the theoretical solves we had implemented during the shoot needed to be put into practise, and this required some co-ordination between the editor, James Forbes-Robertson, and ourselves to find the balance between hitting the narrative beats, finding the correct timings for each shot, and determining how long we had for each transitional moment. In some instances, these moments were difficult to understand as we were going to require re-building the scenes in CG. So some scenes required a few rounds of feedback and adjustment as we laid the foundation for the film.

From there, it became a substantial task to build, join and finesse the transitions, and the other incidental work that came along with it.

LBB> How was the nostalgia of the piece captured through the grade and how did the grade differ across the different periods of time?

Simone> As the film was mostly shot digitally, Tom was keen that we have texture and colour that evoked the eras that related to each segment. We had some great reference points, from Paul Graham’s photography to original footage of the strikes from the early '80s. We gradually shifted texture from 16mm to 35mm through to more modern digital cameras. The art direction and cinematography gave us a great starting point and we manipulated those colours to mimic how stocks of the time or broadcaster transmissions would impact them.

All photos credited to Sophie Barloc.