How to Turn a Field of Farmers Into the Hawkstone Choir

Kit Lynch Robinson is a film and television director working across documentary, automotive and action-led commercial filmmaking. He is a series director on Clarkson’s Farm, Amazon Prime’s most-watched series, and Limitless with Chris Hemsworth, Disney+’s flagship documentary series. His commercial work has won Cannes Lions Gold and Bronze, with automotive films for Toyota and Porsche reaching over 100 million views each. His work is defined by real physical action, clarity of intent and a deliberate, dry sense of humour. At heart, he is still twelve years old, playing with toy cars.

Guy Savin is Marshall Street Editor’s preeminent Automotive editor. With a background cutting the BBC2 Show Top Gear, his love projects for luxury brands such as Hugo Boss, UBS, and The Burj al Arab, and has brought his passion for cars to projects for car brands like Ferrari, BMW, JLR, and Lexus, amongst countless others. He has the ability to use his storytelling craft and experience to create projects that are fresh and glamorous. Whether on set, in some far-flung location, or in Marshall Street HQ, Guy has edited projects for some magnificent campaigns.

Q> Tell us about the brief for this project and what was the jumping point for the idea that eventually made it happen?

Kit> T&P approached me with a very clear and clean idea - create a choir of farmers and sing famous songs with the words altered for comedy. Everyone knew it could be incredible but there can be an anxiety that the simple great ideas are the hardest to pull off. Or at least that you want to do them justice.

It’s a completely unique situation – there is so much genuine creativity on the side of the client…Jeremy and his business partner, Johnny Hornby are literally two of the most creative people in the world. How often are you coming to a project where the client is that creative??? Oh as well as being the onscreen talent and the ad agency owner!

As a growing brand, they are very connected to the decisions. We all yearn for a brave client.. I have been lucky enough to have had brave clients on the past…but what we had here is brave and anarchic and fucking smart.

The project hugely benefitted from a level of trust between Jeremy, Johnny and me – I know their brand and have seen it grow (and the barley that makes it!) so that made things easier.

Add to that Jim Bolton and his staggering CV, the producers at T&P pushing for the money to be spent on the right thing, alongside my incredible crew and here you have a perfect project. So it’s a simple idea, but without the talents and collaboration we had, it could have been a cup of warm sick.

Q> Did Jeremy Clarkson have a fixed look and feel for his brand and how did you interpret it?

Kit> So Jeremy is a very ‘words and story’ focused person. He loves a beautiful image but it's the story first. I have worked with Jeremy for 14 years – TopGear, The Grand Tour and Clarkson’s Farm in between my advertising work. I really understand what he is doing in terms of backing British farmers and what the brand values are of Hawkstone.

There was a real drive to not have a ‘perfect ad’ look. We wanted it to look great but not in ‘an inauthentic perfection of a cider commercial of the 2000s’ way. These are ads but they are also ‘influencer’ endorsements if that makes sense – Jeremy will probably fire me from Clarkson’s Farm for referring to him as an influencer but for marketing purposes that’s what these films are! So authenticity matters. It has to feel like something Jeremy would actually do. Every creative decision is funnelled through a lens of ‘is that what a farmer would do? Get that right and you are gonna be in the right ballpark. It helps that I have directed Clarkson’s Farm since the season 2 finale, so I ‘get’ farmers.

Q> How did you work with the production and creative teams to hit the right visual and comedic tone?

Kit> When something is simple it’s easier to allow mission slip. Your moon shot becomes a drive to Swindon. There was never a moment that this was going to be allowed to happen on this job. There was just too much experience throughout the layers of collaborators. I can’t stress enough the level of care and commitment to the ads being as good, funny and effective as they can be. I guess that’s true of most ads, people have pride in their work but this really was next level. It just really allowed us to concentrate on the creative rather than handholding. The PPM was a joy.

Q> Did you cast real farmers or are they professional singers? What was the casting process like?

Kit> So this was a big thing. Right from the start it was a question of how many farmers actually are good singers? I felt very strongly that we had to be very strict with the casting. The songs we had chosen required a really high level of skill and I always felt that it had to be great – the only comedy comes from the lyric change, not that the singing is bad. As it turns out, quite a lot of farmers are extraordinary choristers and every one of our choir is a real farmer. A couple happen to sing professionally but everyone would be described as a farmer in the newspaper if charged with a crime.

Q> How was your onset approach? And what was the general mood on set?

Kit> I like a happy, fun set. Busy and professional but with lightness. Jeremy is a joy and a pain to work with because he is such a creative force – he only cares about the result being good. So not really a pain but it means there is no hiding!

There is a feeling in the farming community that Clarkson’s Farm and Jeremy have done so much good for farming, for educating people about food, about how hard farming is and how important it is. They feel really seen and much of that is due to Jeremy. It is often quoted that he has done more for farming than Countryfile has done in 25 years. The mood on set was pretty special to be honest. The farmers were thrilled to be there. We knew the songs were great, the quality of the singing was exceptional, and you could tell it was all coming together to be good work. The crew were lots of faces that have worked with Jeremy and me before so it was a joy. Lots of talented people, all working together, pushing in the same direction to create something fun. What more could you want?

Q> What was the most fun part of shooting the films? And how long did it take to shoot all of it?

Kit> Hearing the songs being sung was such a joy – so funny. We had pre-recorded some guide tracks with a small number of our farmers and that sounded great to listen back to but to hear the tracks being belted out with proper passion and enthusiasm was just amazing. It was just so funny. Everyone could feel it and the lyrics are just cheeky – naughty school kid stuff.

Q> Did you edit on set and how did you approach the edit? Were you given free reign?

Guy> Jobs like this are few and far between, but I love the excitement of a quick turnaround. Working with a crew full of friends and faces from my days on BBC’s Top Gear made for a day full of laughs and banter.

With the tracks all pre-recorded and a brief for something more Songs of Praise than anything over-polished, we decided an old-school promo shoot would work best. I was set up to record all the camera feeds, rough-cutting each run through between takes. Kit and I could then fill in any gaps we thought we had in the choir performances. This meant we left the set with the strong cuts of 4 full-length films and their short versions. Back at MSE HQ, we then spent the next few days refining the cuts before presenting some 3 days after the shoot.