Osifeso notes that “there are very few universally understood experiences that we all share as people. One of those experiences would be the innocence and curiosity of being a child.” So the creative team leaned heavily into “those moments of childlike wonder with the environments and situations our boys find themselves in. Some subtle, and some not so.”
Although the film has a remarkably unscripted and candid feel, the team wanted the protagonists to bring themselves into the process, “giving their characters a personality that comes from their own experience,” as Lindstroem puts it. So the team allowed themselves certain freedoms. “We always had a plan for each moment,” continues the director, “but on set, we experimented with certain scenes and tried to capture life happening in front of us.”
The campaign has launched across Reebok’s Instagram and YouTube channels.
Creatively, the team was made up of Kerby Jean-Raymond, the vice president of Reebok, and cinematographer James Laxton, as well as production designer Carlos Lazlo. Lindstroem and the team wanted the whole film to feel “really vivid” like “life seen through the eyes of a child”. With this approach, they aimed at creating a memory-based narrative, reflecting memories playing in your head, “of your childhood, your upbringing, your recollection of places, experiences, moments,” explains Lindstroem. “There is a certain surrealism woven into it that makes some moments feel slightly larger than real life, slightly more magic – only the way a child could see the world.” Osifeso wants people to find familiarity in Reebok’s products and its storytelling, hence why they chose this style of storytelling for this latest campaign.
Osifeso adds that when he first had the idea of “Reconnect”, he visualised it through Lindstroem’s lens, “so there wasn’t much of a need to adapt our respective visions because we began from a place of complete alignment. There’s a certain beauty and sense of familiarity to [Lindstroem’s] pieces that this film needed, in order to be all that it could be.”