Prime Focus London

BBC Six Nations

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The BBC’s trailer for the ‘Six Nations’ Rugby competition is a moody affair that conjures up the game’s intense passion through a post-apocalyptic look which required some post-intensive work, courtesy of PFL Flame artist, Pete Young. The promo opens on a dramatic landscape, focusing on a faraway goalpost which is soon surrounded by a menacing line-up of silhouetted rugby players. We then see an impassioned and physical rugby match kick-off on a burnt-out pitch. Most of the promo, with the exception of the first three shots, was put together using BBC SPORT archive footage. These sourced clips generally came with backgrounds that weren’t relevant to the concept. So a team of seven Digital Fusion artists spent a week-and-a-half separating players from their backgrounds. Once this labour-intensive procedure had been completed, the project went into a Flame suite where Pete started applying a bespoke and highly stylised digital matte painting, designed to work across all shots, of moody skies and mountains. He brought the static matte painting to life with moving elements of cloud, dust, steam and smoke particles. He also had to composite the opening three studio shots which were filmed on bluescreen. PFL’s Flame artist, Pete Young, said: “This was a post-intensive job because every shot had visual effects. Not only did we have to design a strong and highly-stylised post-apocalyptic look, we also had to create a fictional game of multiple players, where each was sourced from separate matches, often coming with a very different look. It took a whole lot of carefully blended layers to build a sequence that was beautiful, dramatic and still believable.”

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