Super Bowl 2025: A Bodacious tale of websites from the emerald isles

The Super Bowl 2025 was the most watched Super Bowl in history and the most popular TV program ever in the USA. To have a commercial aired during this show is quite an achievement. We’d like to tell the tale of the making of a commercial in the misty Irish countryside, weaving past and future together, and bringing a sense of longing of yore, with it.

Squarespace had its 11th consecutive Super Bowl commercial this year, starring Barry Keoghan and his four legged donkey friend, Don Mosely (not Jenny). Set on the wild Atlantic’s west coast of Ireland, GPN’s Irish production service partner, Bodacious, serviced the commercial for Biscuit Filmworks (LA/London) and Revolver (Aus), which Steve Rogers directed.

GPN spoke with the owner of Bodacious, Max Brady, Local Producer for the commercial, who chronicled the adventures of a film team in December on the rugged Emerald Isles. Each film, regardless of the length and content, comes with its own set of individualized challenges. Allow us to spin the saga of this commercial; one of rain and darkness, laughter and might, wet donkeys and chattering geese.

Bodacious got the green light from their bid in mid-November and then went straight into action. The commercial needed to be shot on the three shortest and darkest days of the year, December 20-22, just before Christmas. This gave them about 6 hours of daylight in unpredictable Atlantic coast winter weather. The challenges began early on, beyond the dark days and stormy weather.

Max’s team did a quick round of scouting all over the coast of County Clare, which is known for its cliffs and for being a UNESCO Global Geo Park. It had what Biscuit was looking for - stone walls, small, twisty roads, traditional homes, and a rugged countryside. The creative vision from the team was to have a sense of drama through the landscape and the changeable weather with a sense of timelessness. The West Coast of Clare in particular is a tourist and surfing destination – quiet and pretty much closed up for winter – but it was this area that the production based themselves in – using the town of Lahinch as a base, and radiating out from there to small towns such as Milltown Malbray, Kilfenora, Doolin – and of course the cliffs all along the coastline. The cliffs in County Clare are considered among the highest in Europe – beaten only by the Slieve League Cliffs in Co Donegal, just up the road.

The local county council was particularly easy to deal with and they helped with everything, making this part of Bodacious’ experience much easier. They were able to get an entire hotel to open up especially for them. This served as the local crew’s unit base and the caterer used the kitchen to prepare the meals. According to Max, “They basically gave us the keys to everything and said, “Go find what you need.””. The council also helped to find the extras, engineers, safety people, etc. Due to so many of the workers and extras coming from the area, the production was good for sustainability, which is something that Max emphasizes in each of her productions. In addition to this, they kept their carbon footprint to a minimum by renting the props and costumes or buying them from a charity shop and then selling them back at the end of production.

When it came to the actual filming outdoors, the weather was often so dismal that they needed to pull closely together and work as a unit. Max recalls that even the Irish crews, who are used to colder, wetter weather, were struggling with the conditions on the day that a storm came in. She doesn’t think anyone was entirely dry for three days, so this alone was a huge challenge. Given that they simply didn’t have much time to shoot due to the time of year, the lights and cameras had to be set up in the dark, so that turn over could start as soon as it was light enough. On Saturday evening, a huge storm rolled in, but filming continued to get the job done. The camera was inside an interior location at this point – but there were many crew members outside, literally keeping the lights on. Max joked that the empty hotel the local crew took over was like “The Shining”. The mood was high and bright even when winds thrust its gales upon the production.

In order for this to be shot as a timepiece and as authentically as possible, which was important to both Squarespace and Steve, Bodacious helped with a lot of research on the traditional music and dances of Ireland. A traditional Sean Nós dancer was cast along with a more modern Irish traditional dancer. Sean Nós means ‘in the old way’, and is culturally seeing a revival in the West of Ireland in particular. It was also important to the director that the Uillean pipes were authentic, so casting an actor that could also play was key. The commercial also includes geese, chickens, dogs, and donkeys- who were trained and became a part of the crew. Pulling a production together so close to the Christmas break on the West Coast of Ireland in the face of Atlantic weather was challenging, but overall the production was a positive one. Everyone had a lot of fun with the geese, who have been acting for 15 years, and who interacted and “talked” to the crew and because of their time on multiple sets understand, “Action. Cut. First Position.”

When the viewers at the Super Bowl see a minute long commercial set in Ireland sometime in the distant past with a modern twist, they have no idea what the back story is or how many people were involved in the making of. The local Irish crew was 145 people; add Biscuit’s team and pre and post-production, and it’s well over 200. Commercials are a beautiful art form of visual storytelling, told in a short amount of time, which have the ability to fill us with a yearning for something that we cannot touch, but can feel in the depths of our being. This commercial, a melodramatic comedy, shares its fantasy, fiction, wit and humor with the audience.

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