As Usain Bolt stipulated, any international company thinking of shooting him for an ad campaign, shoots must be done right here in Jamaica. This TV commercial, too, was flimed on the island in a move to help provide jobs and help its people like he said.

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The athlete’s preparations ahead of this year’s Olympic Games remain his primary focus, and filming had to be carefully structured around his punishing training schedule. The ad was filmed in Kingston, and the team, led by Telkom’s agency DDB, was given just three hours to complete the shoot.

Bolt’s management worked closely with Telkom and DDB to ensure the developed concept would resonate with the superstar athlete. The storyline, which sees Bolt training and developing a young athlete, certainly achieved this.

“Usain Bolt is one of the world’s most universally recognised superstars. When it comes to speed, he is the best of the best, and we are proud to associate our brand with such excellence. Our collaboration with Bolt has allowed us to tell an authentic and original story about our Boltspeed Fibre broadband,” said Telkom Chief Marketing Officer, Enzo Scarcella.

Telkom used cinema-style technology to produce the advert – which features a toddler track star in training – while keeping a realistic look and feel. As children have proportionately bigger heads, feet, hands and knees compared to adults, fat suit technology was used to allow an adult athlete to be filmed in the sporting sequences.

This allowed seamless filming while maintaining the correct proportions of a two-year-old boy. Similar state-of-the-art technology was used in The Avengers and Resident Evil movies. Computer-generated imagery was kept to a minimum and used mainly for wider scenes.

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