Cam Newton, NFL MVP, Carolina Panthers’ Quarterback and media scapegoat goes on a pre-season training run in the forest.

As he runs, he hears the voice of his Mother in his head, reading an extract from children’s classic Watership Down about the ‘Prince with a thousand enemies’, the rabbit, who everyone is trying to bring down, but who survives through speed and cunning.

As the words ring in his ears, the forest takes on a threatening, ghoulish character in his mind, menacing Cam at every turn.

As he emerges unscathed from this psychological thicket, we are left with his Mother’s defiant plea to fight back against prejudice, and ‘never be destroyed’.

The VFX on Cam was a good combination of in-camera practical effects married with CG simulations. We designed a custom rig that would give Cam a physical object to interact with that we could frame and light. It also gave us a good base of interaction and reference to match the CG to. A bark tube was constructed and Cam was brave enough to smash it himself, which got rid of any potential head replacements. The simulations were done in Houdini, matching the speed and weight of some in-camera reference pieces. The final composites were done in Nuke and polished off in Flame.

We also managed to get clearance to cut down a real tree and film it with three different cameras, which was then rotoscoped and composited into the backgrounds.