Appointment to View: Behind the scenes of The Sun's Olympic ad

The "what makes Britain great?" ad is a spoof of the classic Olympic-themed film.

It features Nigel Havers, the 'Chariots of Fire' star, sitting on a deckchair reading The Sun as the "great British public" run along a beach in slow motion to the film's iconic theme tune by Vangelis.

The "British public" was made up of a truckload of actors, members of fitness and running clubs as well as extras who were put through an intense and extremely cold two days on a windswept beach in West Wittering in December.

Billy Faithful, creative director at WCRS, said: "It was around the three-degree mark, but just as we expected, they didn't let us down, running the beach again and again and again, supported by an outstanding team from Sonny London, supplying buckets of warm water for cold feet, hot soup and those silver blanket things.

"The light was fantastic and it really shows in the final film."

Guy Manwaring, director at production company Sonny London, said: "The hardest thing on the shoot was to keep the moral of the cast up when they had to run in freezing cold water all day.  Eventually I had to promise I would go into the sea myself at the end of the job.

"It was worth it as the crew managed to get some good slow motion footage of it from the crane."

The Sun’s wider digital campaign encourages readers to film themselves doing everyday activities in slow motion and upload the video to Facebook.

Readers can use The Sun’s specially created app to add the movie’s music to their clip. The best films will be featured on paper's website.

The ad has been created in partnership with creative agency WCRS. It will run on TV and in cinemas until the start of the Games.