The latest edition of LeftLion hit the mean streets of Nottingham this weekend, with a cover feature on the World Twenty20 cricket tournament. The fixtures are being held at four grounds around the country this month, including Trent Bridge (which was host to Australia’s exit yesterday - sorry boys, you just couldn’t cut it, see you when you hand over the ashes…). The tournament is being broadcast around the world on satellite television and is expected to reach an audience of half a billion people!
We came up with a cover concept which depicted the difference in scale of watching a cricket match on tv and being at the real thing, aiming to encourage people to take advantage of the event happening in their own back yard (Nottingham’s a small place).
The idea we ran with was the photo you see above; a shot of two people watching cricket on tv, as if in their lounge, but set up on the pitch at Trent Bridge. I wanted to use a photograph to bring a sense of realism to the viewer’s perspective, giving the impression of being closer to the scene than illustration could have achieved. I like the way it plays with the idea of scale and proximity, reflecting the two viewpoints from which people will experience the event.
It was a pretty simple shot to set up (Trent Bridge’s marketing guy was on side), the only hiccup being having to reschedule the shoot date due to bad weather (English cricket grounds are, of course, used to having such circumstances delay proceedings, so it wasn’t too much of a problem). Second time around we got good weather with an enticing blue sky, so I set everything up on the rug at the corner of the pitch, making sure to inlcude the scoreboard, poured prop drinks for the people in the chairs and was done in about ten minutes.
The coverline in the sky seals the deal, helping make sense of the image and bringing the whole cover together. It also has a bright, colourful quality to it which makes for a nice seasonal progression for this year’s covers so far: white and stark in winter (issue 27), flowers in spring (issue 28) and green grass and blue skies for summer. I think the next issue could be due a far-out cover illustration.
