Permanent Collection

Behind the Scenes on Hyper-Real Sports IDs

Posted on Monday, August 31, 2015

Frame director Anders Schroder’s love of still photography informs the look and feel for eight intricate and ambitious new IDs for Abu Dhabi Media’s AD Sports channel created in collaboration with Obeida Sidani, CD at Les Folies Design Haus in Dubai.

“Anders wanted to explore what the opposite of the ever-so-popular organic film look that uses handheld, vintage lenses to create shallow depth of field and flat grading would look like.

“He wanted to achieve a look that was almost synthetic and videogame-like with extreme angles and razor sharp infinite focus but all achieved in-camera. A look that would be synonymous with high
performance rather than the performers themselves.

Watch behind the scenes:

“Being fascinated by the HDR look typically associated with commercial sports photography, Anders suggested to re-create this look BUT in live action. The technique is based on the idea of shooting with multiple exposures and then combine them in post.

“Together with DP Zubin Mistry they asked themselves: How do we shoot fast paced action high-speed, everything in focus, no motion blur, at night, with both the buildings and the sky and athlete fully exposed?

“The answer was motion control, a monstrous lighting package, Master Primes wide angles, Phantom Flex 4K, and lots of compositing. Using the motion control rig they filmed each shot in several passes moving the massive light rigs out of the shot each time background and buildings were being shot.

“The motion control rig enables the team to be able to squeeze in another cool gimmick; slow motion athletes in the foreground and time lapse cityscapes in the backgrounds – in the same shot.”

Watch the director’s cut of the finished IDs: