CARRIE UNDERWOOD OPEN 2024.
SNF has been primetime television’s No. 1 show for 13 consecutive years, so with that comes some pressure to make each year bigger and better. This season was no different so we were thrilled to get the call again from Tripp Dixon VP, Creative Director and the NBC Sports team for this season’s VFX for Sunday Night Football show open. The creative this year was much more docu-cinematic and in camera, and shot like she was along with us on a national road show, the singular phenomenon that is Sunday Night Football always on the road going from venue to venue. That meant that the scale extended at both ends of the visual spectrum this year. On one side we were much more intimate with her and on the other we needed it to feel like a massive show.
CREATING THE STADIUM
Our first challenge was to transpose the stage we were shooting at World Resorts Theatre into a large Arena crowd in a large stadium, so our first job was to design the Arena for all the wide shots. The look needed to feel modern and sophisticated but not overpower the stage. We modelled our look on a minimalist style with simple architecture that allowed our crowd and led rings to cut through to give it shape and scale. This was a night time spot so the trick here was to add plenty of detail in the blacks. Even though most of those details fall off in focus, it’s those ‘blurry’ details that make it photoreal. We created the arena to work well from both viewpoints of shooting at the stage from the crowds perspective and also the reverse angles of shooting outwards from the stage perspective. Once dialed in, we created a lighting system that could light up every illuminated element in the arena so we could control the lighting cues.
THE ART OF CROWDS
Creating large crowds in CG is a fine art. Even though at first glance, its a vast sea of moving grains of sand, it takes a lot of skill to trick the eye to make it convincing. Our approach was a blend of Houdini CG crowds combined with nuke crowd plates we captured on our shoot day. We motion captured performances for the CG crowd so we had full control allowing us to increase the amount of energy, the further they were from the camera. The lead edges of the crowd pods were then framed with the real crowd plates we shot. As we get closer to the camera the real crowd plates were also blended in. No crowd would be complete without the sparkle of phone lights and to help break up large groups of people, we added in random fans on shoulders, waving fabric and holding banners. Even in the darkness, its these details that sell the shot.
BRINGING THE STAGE SCREENS TO LIFE
Creating the 16K stage screen content was itself an entire project inside a project. The full performance from beginning to end had three large video walls behind Carrie and the band and had to be designed and animated prior to shooting. We used a combination of Unreal engine and footage to create abstract city environments that created the feeling of travelling from city to city. As the three screens were staged apart from each other and overlapped, careful considerations were taken to make it appear like one giant screen. The edit and graphics on the screens were all perfectly timed to the performance and lighting cues on both the set and the CG arena light.
BRINGING THE ARENA TO LIFE
The magic of this project was in how the team at K+C choreographed so many individual elements at once to create the beautifully cinematic end result. Everything had to be timed and dialed in to the frame. The in camera stage lighting was extended in post to light up the CG stadium and crowd. The screen animation was animated perfectly to the music which in turn triggered the LED rings in the arena and the lighting towers. The matchups also change each week, so toolkits were provided to adjust the projected logos, the LED rings and lighting easily each week for those shots.
BEHIND THE SCENES
We have had the pleasure of teaming up with the team at NBC Sports for the last two years and it’s impressive just how dialed in their production team is. It’s a fast moving and well oiled machine that moves with military precision. So precise in fact, that barring a couple of shots in the broadcast truck, this entire spot was shot in one day. As for the VFX, it’s a perfect fit for the team at K+C. We also like to operate with this kind of planning and preparation. Every CG shot was prevized and dialed in long before the shoot with each detail carefully questioned and considered.
