To coincide with the London 2012 Olympic Games, Foxtel launched eight dedicated HD channels which gave viewers the most extensive coverage of an Olympic games ever seen. To dramatise the fact that Foxtel was only one place to see every medal live and in full, we created a 45-second television commercial which consisted of one seamless athletic move created by a number of different high profile Australian athletes in training. In the process, shining a spotlight on the determination, effort, sacrifice and drive that it takes to win Gold.

Shot in different locations around Australia, each scenario had to be seamlessly blended together. Due to the nature of shooting professional athletes around their pre-olympic training schedules there was limited opportunity to meticulously rehearse and test the effectiveness of the VFX process on set.

Backgrounds and entire environments had to be re-created, augmented and often totally re-built in order to match the camera angles, lighting conditions and physical structures between locations and shots.

Once the offline was completed, each shot was camera tracked, and the corresponding geometry that existed in the plate was modelled in 3D. Then each background was re-built and stitched together from a combination of the footage and matte paintings, then re-projected and composited over the built 3D geometry. This enabled us to completely reconstruct the camera moves. At times these moves were very similar to the ones captured in camera, with slight modifications that enabled the transitions to flow. Other times the entire camera move was re-designed to allow for creative freedom and total control.

Each athlete was then rotoscoped (including shadows, water / ground interaction) and composited into the scenes. The transitions from person to person were achieved using a variety of methods - morphing, compositing of extra elements to make costumes appear or disappear, and frame-by frame vector painting to blend limbs, skin tones and physical features.

Compositing also took place at 5K resolution, often at 100FPS, on two plates of the same action; one shot with a 75mm lens and the other with a 25mm lens (under / over mounted on the one RED Epic camera) to allow for fluidity and the option to change and adjust the framing of shots and create dynamic post-moves.