MNF - Ford Monday Night Football

Creatively lead, the aim of the Monday Night Football set was to have a virtual green screen area that gave the studio a grand scale and presence, yet stayed true the the well established brand. It was an area where presenter Ed Chamberlain could have the chance to walk and interact with graphics as if they were a part of the area he occupied.

The movement between the set and the green screen had to be seamless which posed many challenges in development as there was a hard cut line between the real and the virtual. Not only this, we were looking to drive all content for the graphic, as well as the set itself from a single box solution where many channels choose three.

Using Softimage XSi a low poly model was built, that had the ambient lighting and textures baked to a set of clean and coherent UV maps. Although time consuming at the front end of the project this was imperative further down the line to enable quick and flexible manipulation of the baked lighting to match up with the real set. 

The match up was performed whilst having the real set in place, doing this meant that it was easier to see where to focus on the alteration required. 

Getting the match between the real and the virtual was exceptionally difficult, the slightest of changes to the VR setup whether model changes, lighting changes, keyer calibration changes or shooting position changes, every area had to work exceptionally hard to make the join seamless. 

The gallery can control all content via Trio and can update / push new content moments before air for sequences such as formation walkups which would only ever be released just before a game is to take place.