How Thierry Henry Was Put in the Picture for Sky

Earlier today the new spot for Sky Sports' coverage of the Premier League was released and it's fair to say it's pretty epic.

Seamlessly placing Sky pundit and footballing legend Thierry Henry within famous Premier League moments, the 90-second spot ups the ante on what can achieved with the technology the industry has at its fingertips.

Here, Brothers & Sisters executive creative director, Andy Fowler [above] and Outsider director Scott Lyon [below] talk us through the creation of the does-what-it-says-on-the-tin titled, Greatest Premier League Moments.

Tell us a bit about the film and the idea behind it; what was Sky’s brief to you?

AF: Sky wanted to remind football fans that the crazy rollercoaster called the Premier League was born on Sky Sports and has lived every one its 23 years there.

They asked us to make them a sports campaign as good as the best Nike and adidas ads, which is an awesome brief for creatives. We wanted to tell a story that would span the 23 years of the Premier League. So it became a question of finding the most powerful and original way to do this.

How – and how quickly – did you come to the decision of showcasing the best moments from the history of Sky’s Premier League coverage?

AF: There’s something Sky has that no other sports brand has, and that is 23 years of footage of famous Premier League moments. There’s more emotion and memories in these moments than anything we could manufacture from scratch.

We decided pretty quickly that the creative opportunity was to use these assets in an original way.

Once you’d landed on the central idea, how hard was it to choose what the ‘best moments’ were?

AF: As you can imagine there was plenty of debate. The guys at Sky are fierce football fans and very opinionated about football history. And there’s loads of footy fans at Brothers and Sisters, so the friendly banter flowed.

Ultimately the storytelling in the film was most important, so we gave Scott a shortlist of moments and let him loose with his editor, Art [Jones] at Work, to find the best flow across 90 seconds.

How much discussion was there around how exactly you would achieve the effect of getting Henry seamlessly into so many iconic moment?

AF: You saw a present day character dropped into archive footage in Forest Gump and that technique has been done many times. We wanted to find a new spin on the technique that would feel fresh and would push the boundaries of what was possible in film craft. So we set the challenge to a bunch of top directors.

What did Scott Lyon bring to the project?

AF: Rather than placing Thierry directly into the archive footage, Scott wanted to create his own camera moves and framings that would give him more control. By recreating and extending the moments beyond their original boundaries, it meant the camera could drift away from the epicenter of each moment and naturally find Thierry.

It would trick the viewer’s eye into believing Thierry was actually there, even though he can’t have been.

Scott, when you were first approached with the idea, what were your thoughts and did you immediately know how you’d approach it?

SL: The idea of putting someone into old footage is not a new idea so we felt that we needed to push it further. The approach was to imagine what the cameraman would do if Thierry did actually appear in these particular moments; how would the cameraman frame the shot?

This led us to create missing parts of the shot giving us room to pan off or tilt up to find Thierry. We did this by building a replica version of the side of the pitch or stand and used motion control to match the camera move on the original footage and then add an extra move to find Thierry.

You’ve worked on some very clever and successful VFX-heavy spots before but was this a new level of technical wizardry?

SL: Yes it was, as we were committed to what was happening in the original footage so the challange for VFX was actually in pre-production rather than post as all the camera moves had to be tracked and then replicated on motion control - which is no mean feat when your matching to a shot from 1993 when the cameraman is running behind Fergie [Alex Ferguson] with the camera on his shoulder.

Working with sports people can sometimes be a difficult task; how did working with Thierry Henry compare?

SL: As Thierry has retired from playing it was much easier as we had more time. Also he’s got that Gallic charm going on so he’s a bit of a natural on camera.

AF: Working with big sports talent can be tricky because of the limits on access to their time. Thierry was wonderful, because he was happy to do as many hours and days as we needed to achieve a boundary-breaking ad. Huge credit must go to his patience and high standards.

How soon did you get ETC on board to make the idea possible and how close was the working relationship?

SL: We worked very closely even before I started working on the treatment so I wasn’t proposing something that couldn’t be done.

What was the most difficult aspect of pulling this project together?

AF: For us it wasn’t so difficult. The skill was entirely down to the mind-boggling preparation and craftsmanship from Scott and the guys at Electric Theatre Collective.

On the shoot in Barcelona I asked them both how this job rated in the most technical projects they’d ever undertaken. Both said it was testing their knowledge and skill to the very limit, which I loved!

SL: The prep where all the stadium dimensions, height of camera positions, angle of seating, sun position on footage etc all had to be worked out. As well as the major task from ETC of 3D tracking all the camera moves on the original shots.

And the most rewarding?

AF: You don’t want to make work that only five people see. The Premier League is loved by the man on the street, by your dad, by your mates, by people in every corner of the globe.

It’s one of those ads that people will notice, will share, will love, debate and talk about. It will provoke banter, emotion, memories and expectation for the season ahead.

SL: The camera track from the original footage and the motion control liking each other.

You’ve worked with Sky for a number of years; how has the relationship between you grown and developed?

AF: The longer we work together, the deeper the understanding, the greater the shared ambition. It’s a collaborative way of working, with mutual respect and a spirit of openness. Long may it continue.

What, for you, is the best moment in Premier League history?

AF: As a long suffering Birmingham City fan it would have be when we returned to the Premier League in 2002 after a 17 year gap, and beat Aston Villa 3-0 at St Andrews in the most ecstatic atmosphere I’ve ever experienced.

SL: Unfortunately as the mighty Huddersfield Town have yet to reach those dizzy heights I would say it’s still to come.