Don’t Mess With Texas: How JANE Digitally Enhanced the Dallas Cowboys
Everybody already knows football is big in the US, but AT&T wanted to show the world just how big. Official sponsors of the Dallas Cowboys, the multinational telecommunications company partnered with BBDO LA, Partizan USA and director, Warren Fu, to shoot a fantastical football film of epic proportions. Entrusting the VFX to creative studio, JANE, with the technical challenge of digitally supersizing star players, the teams combined to unleash an exhilarating promo that demonstrates the Cowboys' athletic superpowers.
Shot by Partizan director, Warren Fu, the large-scale technicalities of this project required a creative director with an in-depth understanding of interactive real time environments and forced perspective, as well as practical experience with motion control rigs. With more than two decades of experience of creative and technical innovation within production, post production, emerging technology and visual effects, JANE’s West Sarokin was the ideal fit for lead artist and creative director for this mammoth feat. Putting his broad skill set into practice, the Emmy-nominated creative flawlessly merged surreal VFX with live-action set against a recognisable real-world backdrop.
Towering over their native city, big hitters like Dak Prescott, CeeDee Lamb, Jake Ferguson and Demarcus Lawrence can be seen running around their very own urban playground. Speaking with LBB's April Summers, West dives into the specifics, revealing which skills and techniques he honed in on to craft this outstanding hype film.
LBB> As far as creative briefs go, super-sized football players roaming the streets of Dallas is a pretty fun one! What was the inspiration behind the concept?
West> This was a fantastic concept to be a part of. Anytime you get a brief like this you know you're going to have a really good time making something that people will be excited to see. The key thing we wanted to do was balance the sense of realism with the fantastical concept of Dallas Football players as tall as buildings running through the city.
LBB> Well, you pulled it off! In the film, the giant Cowboys run riot around downtown Dallas - can you tell us a bit about the technical process of crafting the forced perspective in this project?
West> A lot of thought went into how we would take human scale characters and make them seem huge within the natural photographed environments. The first thing we did was a number of tests to determine how we would go about filming normal, human scale environments, 3-D track them, and then feed that data into a motion control rig. We then needed to scale the 3D tracked motion and shoot at high speeds to make our characters feel huge, and to scale the speed of their movement to that of a 60 ft tall human.
LBB> In what ways did this project help you hone your technique?
West> A core part of all visual effects is creative problem-solving, and this is a part I really love. There's a lot of technical problem-solving, of course, but at the end of the day the core goal is to create a fantastic image. In this case it needed to look photo-real as well. You always learn new lessons, taking them from project to project, and each new project sees you apply these learnings in different ways. And all of that helps your capabilities continuously grow and evolve, which is something that I enjoy immensely.
LBB> Given that this is a promo film for an NFL team, were there any crucial motifs or themes that had to be incorporated into the creative?
West> The crucial motif and theme here was to make the Dallas Cowboys look as awesome as possible, and to make them feel huge and immense against the backdrop of the city of Dallas. Cowboys fans have a ton of pride in their team so Warren and the BBDO LA team wanted to make sure the energy of the VFX shots matched the fan and athletic shots in the film. We understood Warren’s vision from the very beginning: to create visuals that would make Dallas fans get super hyped every time they saw the film.
LBB> In addition to players from the team, the spot also features many iconic Dallas locations such as the Reunion Tower, Giant Eyeball, and the AT&T Stadium. How complex is the process of incorporating real-world landmarks into a VFX-heavy project such as this?
West> From the very beginning, this film was a love letter to the people of Dallas, the Cowboys, and all their fans. It was really important to everyone at BBDO LA to incorporate as many iconic Dallas locations as possible, and make the hero Dallas Cowboy players interact with them in fun and interesting ways. Working with Warren and the Partizan team, we decided on the types of actions that would look good for a particular iconic Dallas location. It became a fun game to brainstorm ideas about what kind of interesting football action could take place wherever we were filming.
LBB> Even Cowboys’ mascot, Rowdy, makes a cameo! Where did the idea to have him plucking the cables of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge come from? Can you tell us a bit about the live animation and real-time performance capture process?
West> That shot was a lot of fun! It was inspired by not only Rowdy's personality but the track that's playing over the film, which has a great steel guitar sound. When the decision was made to do a shot at that bridge, just looking at the cables holding it up, everyone involved in the project knew it was a perfect opportunity to have him playing the bridge using it as strings of a guitar. Then it became a matter of how to execute it technically, and inject it with the realism it needed. That shot in particular, gave us a lot of opportunity to add some cool details to the performance and the environment.
LBB> The soundtrack certainly feels very significant, connecting all the dots in regards to the overall look and feel. How else did the music influence the film?
West> Audio is magic, and always imparts a huge emotional component to any project, and it was no different for this. The track itself has a great energy and definitely represents Texas and the Dallas Cowboys. Warren brought really amazing music video energy to the film and we wanted all of the visual effect shots to carry that same energy, imparting a vibe and swagger that we knew was crucial for the film. When you render a shot in isolation, it may look good, but when you add music underneath it, it can change how you want to affect the shot visually. In this type of project watching shots in context and how sequences build, really helps guide the direction of the visual effects.
LBB> Did you use any exciting new technology to bring this crazy concept to life?
West> We got to play with some very fun tech on this. We shot quite a bit with drones, which I personally always enjoy. We spent a ton of time tracking all the scenes very accurately using LiDAR captures of the environments. Then we put all that data into a motion control rig to capture the performances of the players sync’d to the environments captured in the earlier shoot. After that, it was the whole tool kit of compositing, CG, and photogrammetry.
LBB> Finally, what did you enjoy the most about working on this project? Do you have a favourite scene or memorable moment on set that you can share with us?
West> This was a fantastic project to work on. We had the awesome JANE team, plus Warren and the folks at BBDO who were such great collaborators. I loved how much the film was a synthesis of artistically driven creative and interesting, technical, creative problem-solving. My favourite scene is where DeMarcus Lawrence catches a bouncing football in the middle of the plaza in the Main Street district with the giant eyeball. That shot was definitely one of the more complex shots, due to the way the camera moved, and needing to capture not only his movement but the movement of his reflection in the correct physical space. I'm really happy with how it turned out.
