Football superstars shot on HDCAM & HDCAM SR for Nike

Time is always tight on location, but that’s especially the case when your stars are world-class footballers with extremely busy schedules. So when it came to shooting players including Wayne Rooney, Thierry Henry and Ronaldinho for three in-store Nike commercials, PostPanic and director of photography Ruurd Fenenga realised that they could maximise their ten to thirty minutes with each player by using HDCAM and HDCAM SR equipment.

“We couldn’t shoot on film because most film rolls last 12 minutes,” says Fenenga, “and we wanted to make sure that we didn’t have to reload – or have a jam with the camera. That’s why we chose HD.”

“It enabled a really fast turnaround between scenes and shots,” adds PostPanic producer, Ania Markham, “and fast play back, which is really important. We were also travelling around, and we didn’t need to have stuff developed on location. And of course, it’s digital, so it goes really easily into our system for post production. Even more importantly, we wanted a very high quality image for successful chromakeying and post production, which can normally only be attained by formats such as 35mm. In this case, 35mm was not an option because of time, but we knew that HDCAM would provide us with the level of image we needed for perfect post.”

Dream Football

PostPanic were shooting three commercials, collectively known as The Power of 3, and each lasting approximately one and a half minutes.

Made by the Amsterdam-based creative team PostPanic, the ads promote new Nike football boots, with Rooney wearing the Total 90 shoe; Henry the Mercurial shoe; and Ronaldinho the Tiempo shoe. PostPanic also captured footage of Ronaldo and Cristiano Ronaldo for the ads, and both those players, along with Ruud van Nistelrooy, feature in another in-store promotion called Nike Federation Colours.

When describing the style and content of The Power of 3 promos, director Mischa Rozema says, “The idea is that the players are in a dream. They’re imagining that they’re in a stadium, at night, playing football against opponents.”

Given the surreal nature of the ads, the players inhabit a computer-generated environment that makes the most of special effects, but Rozema knew that he wanted to shoot on real grass. “We did put in some computer generated grass,” he explains, “but we couldn’t put it under their feet, because it’s just not going to look realistic.”

That criteria, and the availability of the players, meant that the production team had to travel to three different stadiums in Madrid, Barcelona and Blackburn. Once they’d arrived, they constructed large tents – including one that was 54ft x 54ft x 36ft – which would allow them to shoot against a green screen backdrop.

“It was a challenge setting up a tent big enough that would allow the players to pick up speed when playing with the football,” says Markham.

“We went to Blackburn because we couldn’t film in Manchester. I think Madrid was the only one that would let us go on the pitch, because at the end of the day the tents were really heavy and could cause holes. They also have games in the evening – so it just wasn’t feasible. So with Blackburn we filmed in an in-door training area, and actually brought in turf.”

”What you see is what you get”

After post-production was completed, the promos were mastered to Digital Betacam and distributed by the client, Nike Brand Design EMEA, to their Nike stores around the world. PostPanic, which describes itself as a one-stop shop from concept to delivery specialising in film, motion graphics, animation and print (see www.postpanic.com), has worked regularly with Nike Brand Design and their Creative Director Bas van Koll, since 2002.

But this was the first time the team had shot on HD. So it employed Fenenga, a well-regarded DOP who also teaches High Definition and Master Lighting Classes at Amsterdam’s SAE Institute.

For these commercials, Fenenga recommended that they shoot on the HDW-F900 and record onto the SRW-1. “The main benefits of shooting with the Sony HDW-F900 is the good processor it has,” he says, “and we used the SRW-1 recorder in order to end up with a 10-bit rate instead of 8-bit. That was necessary because the director wanted to have the shots full of contrasts and I did not want the post production people to limit themselves to not zooming in on certain shots.”

He’s a strong advocate of the format. “I have shot on HD before and like it very much,” he says. “I like the ‘what you see is what you get’ method. It’s an instant result, and one more miscommunication out of the way between the producer/director and the rest of the department heads. Also the actors can now ‘see’ in what kind of world they are living in.”

Fenenga says the HDW-F900 lends itself particularly well to the production schedule. “This camera is very sensitive in the darker areas.,” he says. “I like how little light you need in order to shoot on HD.” He also says that the lighting of HD is not too different to film, but he does offer some useful advice on that point. “With shooting on HD you have to light it as if you are shooting on film, but you have to underexpose instead of overexpose. So treat HD like it is reversal film. The trick with HD is that you have to use more negative fill in order to create ‘film-like’ images.”

To use a football analogy, it seems that HDCAM has scored very highly on these particularly promos.