Our CG team worked closely with EA to make this happen, using as much of the assets they could provide. EA have already put a huge amount of work into creating characters which look and move like the real footballers. To create HyperMotion EA have captured full mocap and textures from each of the in-game characters, which is then rendered live in the game engine using some extremely clever AI.

Our CG team took the models and textures provided by EA and placed them in the real world using real world lighting in Maya. The animation rigs used for the models which are fantastic in the game didn’t translate as well for our needs, so the CG team re-rigged the models and tracked the characters motion to live action reference of the players, which we were able to shoot on set.

The aim was for the game characters to look hyper-real rather than real real, so we had to be careful to retain the game engine feel when animating and compositing.

We worked very closely with the director. Chris comes from an animation and VFX background, so from quite early on he was able to provide us look-dev work that he and his team had generated. Then, as the job developed, Chris’s team were able to provide assets they had created to be incorporated into shots we were working on. It’s rare for a project to be as collaborative as this one, with ideas and assets flowing freely between No.8 and Private Island.

Every shot in the film had VFX, so roughly 70 shots plus 15 shots in the teaser versions. We also had multiple ratios and cut-downs of each film, maybe 100 versions in total. The first shoot day was at the beginning of July and we started VFX just after, we then worked on the project, off and on, till the end of September.

It was hugely beneficial to have colour, VFX and sound under one roof on this project. The shoot days were spread over a few months and consequently the edit was in a constant state of flux right up until the delivery. This meant that VFX, colour and sound needed to be constantly developing and reacting to one another. The film flowed pleasingly between departments, feeding off one another and resulting in a film that is undoubtedly stronger as a result.