Sky Sports+ Sets the Stage For an Epic Season of Football

Continuing their collaborative partnership with Sky Creative, Framestore delivered emotive CG crowd work to shape 'Welcome to the Show' – the launch of Sky Sports +

The film, directed by Neil Gorringe, celebrates Sky Sports' offering of having 72 EFL clubs shown live at least 20 times a season on TV, app & NOW with Sky Sports +.

In the spot, we see a stadium full of fans representing all 72 EFL clubs singing a specially adapted version of the Joe Cocker classic ‘Up where we belong’ to celebrate the arrival of over 1,000 EFL games on Sky Sports, the Sky Sports app and streaming service NOW.

Robin Garton, group executive creative director - advertising at Sky Creative said, “Simply put, this is about a lot more football for a lot more fans. We figured that was something to sing about.”

Framestore supported Neil Gorringe’s performance-led vision of focusing on the power of the football fans bond despite being rival teams, with the work raising the emotional intensity and passion through the unusual nature of their circumstances.

Headed up by VFX supervisor at Framestore, Ollie Bersey, the work predominantly consisted of crowd extensions with clusters of fans added into the stands using 2D elements shot on green screens. 

Framestore’s VFX team used three different methods to achieve the visuals. In some instances they were able to simply shoot multiple crowd plates in the location to join together. For shots where faces are recognisable but the scale of the crowd was just too large to reasonably shoot, the shot was executed using their proprietary Nuke-based crowd tool.

“This method is especially useful for scenarios where the crowd is too big to shoot in real life but not so big that you need CGI,” said Ollie Bersey. “The sprite method uses actual filmed footage, making it more realistic and once set up, it’s quick to deploy across multiple shots.”

Finally, for the widest drone shots, the team turned to their CG team to create a fully simulated crowd. This included a shot which featured an extensive CG crowd surfing beneath a giant flag.

Another element of the work involved turning The Valley into a generic stadium. This required removing any identifiable features in terms of logos, artwork and advertising bills and slightly modifying the environment around it.

The challenge of this production was the sheer number of shots and the flexibility needed to handle the incredibly short turnaround from shoot to finished film. 

“It was definitely a very collaborative shoot,” added Ollie Bersey. “We worked together to find the best solutions for each shot, ensuring a creative approach while also allowing for quick execution on a short timeline.”