Concrete Scores Wimbledon Ace For Red Bee Media

Concrete's client, media branding expert Red Bee Media has created a trail to promote the BBC's exclusive coverage of this year's All England Tennis Championship at Wimbledon.
The trail, which features Britain's Wimbledon hopeful Andy Murray, aired on June 11 across all BBC television channels and online.
The core proposition behind the trail is to see if Murray has what it takes to join the elite Wimbledon champions and win the 2009 competition. The trail, for which John McEnroe provides the voiceover, takes the viewer on a journey into Murray's imagination as he prepares for his test in the ultimate tennis area.
A mirror is used as a fantasy device as Murray goes head to head in a rally against some of the game's elite current competitors including Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and sisters; Venus and Serena Williams. After taking on each of his opponents in the rally, Murray is left to fight the ultimate opponent for any world class player, himself.
The trail was made by mixing specially shot footage of Murray with archive images of his rivals. Concrete Post Production rotoscoped the players in the archive footage to cut them out of their usual Wimbledon surroundings and pit them against Murray in a fluorescent virtual Wimbledon centre court. The trails have been shot in 40 second and 50 second formats and will be aired from June 11 throughout the tournament. Red Bee Media created and produced the trail, with post production provided by Concrete and voiceover recording provided by Clearcut.
Concrete's Post Production's Senior Smoke Artist, Marcus Millichope, worked closely with Toby Crawford, Director at Red Bee Media, on the development of the treatment. Marcus was also responsible for the visual effects advising on set and the compositing of all of the players into a virtual Wimbledon Centre Court.
The team at Concrete spent many hours rotoscoping a selection of top seeded players from authentic Wimbledon archives which enabled Marcus to then emulate a real tennis game between Andy Murray and the other players on a fluorescent tennis court. Ross Culligan, Post Production Producer at Concrete, said: "The rotoscoping had to be pin point accurate to convince the viewer that it is a genuine tennis match they are watching. The complication of replacing the net with revolving mirrors lead to many discussions as to how the players and reflections should interact with each other!"
The footage of Murray was filmed using the Red One Camera and Concrete used SGO Mistika to seamlessly process the Red files. Alexander Stiglic, Senior 3D Artist at Concrete developed the final shot using Blastcode to smash the mirrors in a dramatic finale.
James Spence, BBC Group Creative Director of Red Bee Media, added: "The trail demonstrates not only the intense struggle for power at the top of the tennis game at the moment, but also the skill, passion and determination it takes to get to the top. And that, ultimately, the real battle for any elite player is with themselves."
(KMcA/JM)