Fox Sports Design and Method Labs team-up for the Bowl Championship Series on Fox.

We’ve always been huge fans of Method (naturally), and it was a thrill and an honor to have them come aboard and work with us on this cinematic epic of a spot. Creative Director Josh Nichols came up with a perfect visual metaphor for the season long chase for the college championship, a Maze. After developing the style frames in-house (thanks, Phillip Shtoll), Josh and EP Bill Battin brought the boards to Method and they jumped on board.

A practical maze set was built on a blue screen stage where 8 football players had nearly 40 wardrobe changes (to cover all the possible teams). After an intense one day shoot, we handed a locked cut to Method for them to work their magic. Within a really tight schedule, Method modeled, animated and composited the spot, while Fox Sports’ in-house composer Mic Brooling created a thrilling original score.

Method worked tirelessly to pull everything together and bring this to life, and Kevin Prendiville pulled off quite a bit of 2D magic in our Flame to help handle some serious last minute curveballs that had everyone scrambling. Stay tuned for more BCS Maze action as the college football season unfolds. The end is just the beginning…

Credits

VFX

:Method

Visual Effects Executive Producer – Lisa Houck

Visual Effects Producer – Allyson Nevil

Visual Effects Shoot Supervision – Gil Baron, Rob Moggach

Lead Creative - Chris Smallfield

Lead 2D VFX Artist – Billy Higgens, Noah Caddis
CG Technical Supervisor – Hai Nguyen
3D VFX Artist – Matt Longwell, Phillip Hartman, Scott Metzger

Live Action

Director – Joshua Nichols

DP – Ueli Steiger
Producer – Marc Blitstein

Production Design & Art Direction – Paul Martin

Fox Sports

EVP Marketing – Eric Markgraf
SVP/Creative Director – Robert Gottlieb
Creative Director – Joshua Nichols

Executive Producer – Bill Battin
Coordinating Producer – Becky Schaefer
Editor – Junior McRae

Design – Phillip Shtoll

Flame Compositing (in-house) – Kevin Prendiville
Music and Sound Design – Mic Brooling

Fox Sports Design proves ‘You Can’t Script October’ during the MLB Post Season on FOX.

For several years Fox Sports has marketed the MLB post-season with the line, “You Can’t Script October”. This year they moved forward with that branding line by looking backwards for an old idea from a previous project.

“In 2003 we did some work-up on baseball players playing on fields of type. We never produced the idea at the time, but we revisited the concept and realized it would be a perfect fit to house our “You Can’t Script October” line for this years playoffs” said Fox Sports SVP/Creative Director Robert Gottlieb.


[See post to watch QuickTime movie]

2003 Test 1


[See post to watch QuickTime movie]

2003 Test 2


Led by Fox Sports Creative Director Rob Hoover, the team built a practical newsstand and street corner set on a green screen stage, creating a world where headlines change, covers suddenly animate, and players burst from the confines of the printed page as an entire Newsstand comes to life.

With only two weeks to post the spot after the shoot, Eight VFX modeled, animated and composited all explosions and paper effects, integrating rotoscoped players into all angles of the meticulously matched in-camera plates. Fox Sports Flame Designer Thomas Downs stalked the streets of Hollywood during the midnight hours capturing backgrounds he used to seamlessly merge the stand into its realistic environment.

As Eight VFX was finishing their effects shots, Fox Sports Kirk Smith cut the spot to the music of The Killers “When You Were Young”, and Fox’s Jay Hayes created the sound design that brought this surreal journey to the Fall Classic to life…

Live Action

Director – Rob Hoover

DP – Tom McGrath

Art Director – Paul Bickel

Production Company – Marsha Hunt Productions

Fox Sports

EVP Marketing – Eric Markgraf

SVP/Creative Director – Robert Gottlieb

Creative Director – Rob Hoover

Producer – Keith Hritz

Flame Compositing & Design – Thomas Downs

Editor – Kirk Smith

Sound Design – Jay Hayes

Magazine Design – Sinbad Kazakian

Eight VFX

Executive Producer – Baptiste Andrieux

VFX Supervisor – Jean Marc Demmer

VFX Producer – Marsi Frey

3D Supervisor – Fred Hopp

Year – 2008

Sometimes clip-based spots can be an absolute nightmare to deal with, but sometimes it just turns into a really cool opportunity to do something fun. We had some old design/type references sitting on our wall for a hundred years that Guillermo took and built the core of the design with. Then we had Christian work with an idea for environmental 3D elements to be tracked into scenes. Blake came aboard and really stitched it all together. This one definitely blossomed into a team project in every way, with Kevin coming on to help track and build 3D numbers, Junior cutting, and Fulton creating an original music piece (in about 8 hours).

Credits

EVP Marketing – Eric Markgraf

SVP/Creative Director – Robert Gottlieb

Creative Director – Blake Danforth

Design & Animation – Guillermo Lecuona

Design – Christian De Castro

Flame – Kevin Prendiville

Editor – Junior McRae

Music – Fulton Dingley

Mark brought Renascent in for an NFL pitch and they delivered beautiful boards we absolutely fell in love with. We switched
it from an NFL project to a network HD piece, and Josh took over working with Joost to deliver this really eye catching piece.
It was a little bumpy getting this off the ground (the time zone and language difference made it all a bit more challenging for
Keith and Josh) but Joost was awesome and we’re really proud of this new ID.

Credits

Design and Animation - Renascent

Fox Sports SVP/Creative Director - Robert Gottlieb
Fox Sports Creative Director - Josh Nichols
Fox Sports Creative Director - Mark Denyer-Simmons
Fox Sports Producer - Keith Hritz
Fox Sports Sound Design - Mic Brooling

Press

Read more about the design process at ProVideoCoalition.com

Yankee Stadium’s iconic facade, along with giant billboards of today’s greatest baseball
stars, magically appear across New York City to herald the arrival of the final All-Star Game
ever at legendary Yankee Stadium.

To promote the landmark final All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium this July, the Fox Sports in-house Creative Group came
up with a concept of having Yankee Stadium’s famous white facade animate and appear on iconic New York landmarks,
while massive mechanical billboards of todays star players simultaneously start appearing on top of skyscrapers. To achieve
the visual effects needed to bring the spot to life, Fox Sports’ creative team once again partnered with Paris based visual
effects house BUF.

FOX Sports SVP/Creative Director Robert Gottlieb and Designer Guillermo Lecuona created the campaign based on boards
designed by Lecuona, and Gottlieb and Lecuona co-directed the 2 day live action shoot on location in New York. Fox Sports
Flame artist Kevin Prendiville was able to previz many of the animation sequences, which allowed FOX Sports and BUF to
lock in the editorial before shooting a single frame. The final spot features a seamless blend of stock footage, stills, and
35mm film along with RED camera footage shot in New York.

“The biggest challenge we faced on our shoot was getting the cameo by Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriquez. We had them on
set for about 9 minutes, and we shot in front of the stadium just a few hours before a game against the Red Sox, so it was
a really crazy scene to pull off” said Gottlieb.

Editor Kirk Smith found the perfect track to convey the emotional sense of awe and anticipation the spot called for with
“Lazy Eye” by Silversun Pickups, and the amazingly detailed sound design by Fox Sports Mic Brooling brought New York
to life.

Live Action

Director - Robert Gottlieb and Guillermo Lecuona
DP - Mott Hopfel
Producer - Lissa Weiss

Fox Sports

EVP Marketing - Eric Markgraf
SVP/Creative Director - Robert Gottlieb
Design & Creative - Guillermo Lecuona
Executive Producer - Bill Battin
Coordinating Producer - Becky Schaefer
Editor - Kirk Smith

Flame Compositing & Design - Kevin Prendiville
Sound Design - Mic Brooling

BUF

Supervisor - Lucas Salton
VFX Supervisor & Flame artist - Thibault Debaveye
Producer - Audrey-Anne Bazard

Year - 2008

Nascar hit the airwaves in February, and with that came one of the department’s most sought after campaigns.

This year Jason Scott and Mark Denyer-Simmons brought “Engine City” to the masses. It was a hyper-surreal interpretation of what goes on in one of the massive engines of a NASCAR during a race. BUF was the production Inc. that did all of the heavy lifting once Mark and Jason flushed out the idea. Fortunately during pre-production the remastered Blade runner DVD was hitting the shelves so there was plenty of inspiration front and center. Done completely in CG, “engine City” really captured the essence of the fury and power that is Nascar.

………………………………………………………………………

STORYBOARDS

Credits

EVP Fox Sports - Eric Markgraf
SVP/Creative Director - Robert Gottlieb
Lead Creatives Jason Scott & Mark Denyer-Simmons
Executive Producer - Bill Battin
Editor - Kirk smith
Production Company - Buf
Audio - Mic Brooling

This FSN spot was designed entirely in-house in a single mac with no budget. The first set of boards turned out a little too conservative and corporate looking, so we went nuts with the next ones. We designed a patchwork of visually dense and varied frames which became the style for the spot. Originally we wanted to use sets of animated stills exclusively, but ended up running out of time and had to throw some b-roll in the spot to keep the energy up and hopefully the viewer interested.

Credits

Creative Director - Rob Hoover
Design/Animation - Tom Neston
Edit - Kirk Smith
Sound Design - Jay Hayes

The red carpet bash for the 2008 Super Bowl was going to be the biggest to date. To showcase the event, Fox Sports created a Jack and the Beanstalk inspired spot featuring a massive red carpet that grows from a football and arrives at the Super Bowl stadium in the clouds above. Along the journey, the spot features a cast of thousands ranging from Ryan Seacrest to Willie Nelson. To realize this fantastical world, Fox Sports called upon the visual effects wizards at Rezn8 to animate a :30 second promo that seamlessly blends 35mm filmed live-action, still photography, b-roll footage, video and 2d/3d animation.

Credits

EVP Fox Sports - Eric Markgraf
SVP/Creative Director - Robert Gottlieb
Creative Director - Joshua Nichols
Executive Producer - Bill Battin
Editor -Tom Hok & Junior McRae
Sound Design - Mic Brooling
VFX/3D - Rezn8

The NFL Playoffs mean snow, drama, and awesome slow-mo footage with a raspy narrator.

So what did we do to go along with the perfect football combo?

We broke out the big guns for a live action shoot depicting players emerging from the snowy tundra. Art Director, Paul Bickell researched everything from exotic translucent fabrics to sheets of plexi but in the end it was just:

$9.11 for a plastic lawn tarp
$43 for a plywood frame

After much trial and error, this budget busting combo plus a nice lighting set-up from DP Larry Dolkart and crew
proved to be just the right formula for this moody and minimalistic look.

Credits:

SVP/Creative Director - Robert Gottlieb
Creative Director - Blake Danforth
Producer - Bill Battin
Lead Design & Animation - Kevin Prenderville & Tom Neston
Lead Editor - Rich Mason
Audio Design - Jay Hayes

Fox Sports in-house creative team has partnered with visual effects house Buf to produce a visually arresting spot
announcing the arrival of College Football’s Bowl Championship Series to Fox this season.

“Getting the Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, and new National Championship game was a huge coup for us.
We wanted to create a very dramatic and intense message to make viewers feel that, now that the BCS is on Fox, it has reached a new level of importance” said Robert Gottlieb, Fox Sports VP/ Creative Director.

The spot is a surreal take on the proverbial “climb to the top”. Ladders that stretch for miles into the sky above are
populated by college football players and teams all trying to climb to the top and reach the crystal Championship
Trophy that is awarded to the National Champions. Dozens of teams are seen on the ladders miles above earth as
they fight, grapple, and try to defeat each other on their journey. Classic rivalries are played out as Notre Dame and
USC engage in combat, Florida and Florida State go at each other, Ohio State unceremoniously throws Michigan off
a ladder, and a Miami Hurricane player tries to send a ladder full of opponents crashing down to earth.

The spot, directed by Fox Sports’ Robert Gottlieb and Guillermo Lecuona, was filmed over 3 days on a blue screen set
in Burbank, then edited back at Fox’s in-house facilities before being sent to the team at Buf for creation of the visual
effects and 3D modeling and animation.

“The work Buf brought to this project was amazing…” said Gottlieb, “I’ve worked with Buf on several projects now and
they just deliver at such a high level every time. I feel very fortunate to have them work with us on these projects.”

Credits

EVP Marketing - Eric Markgraf
SVP/Creative Director - Robert Gottlieb
Director - Robert Gottlieb & Guillermo Lecuona
Designer - Guillermo Lecuona
Executive Producer - Paul Andraos
Writer/Producer - Max Wanger
Music - Mic Brooling
Editor - Tom Hok
Production Co - Marsha Hunt Productions
DP - Larry Dolkart
Stunt Coordinator - Joey Box
Production Design - Paul Bickel
Visual Effects - BUF