NBC Sunday Night Football Show Open 2015

The 2015 football season again brought Carrie Underwood center-stage kicking off NBC's ratings-dominant Sunday Night Football extravaganza. Actual behind-the-scenes footage combined with both stunning practical sets and amazing computer-generated environments make for a highly polished visual journey.

Once again, Editorial was executed in NYC throughout the entire month of July, melding Carrie's performance, football players composited into virtual environments, and updatable gameplay for weekly football highlights. The impressive photo-real visual effects were handled deftly by ZOIC's masterful designers, creative directors, and compositors.

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New York & San Francisco-based production studio Bodega’s Emmy Award-winning creative director Haley Geffen and Zoic Studios teamed up with NBC Sports for the fourth season running to deliver full-throttle football excitement in the open for NBC’s Sunday Night Football. The open, featuring Carrie Underwood and a host of NFL stars including Russell Wilson, Antonio Brown, Odell Beckham Jr., Patrick Peterson, Dez Bryant, Clay Matthews, and DeMarco Murray, debuted September 13th on Sunday Night Football‘s Giants vs. Cowboys broadcast, which was watched by nearly 27 million viewers.

Zoic Studios was brought on board to telegraph stadium environment intensity to living rooms across the nation. Zoic ECD Chris Jones and VFX Supervisor Julien Brami led the team to intertwine the kinetic stage graphics with the live-action footage of Underwood’s performance and the NFL players to simulate an immersive concert environment. The plan was intricate: twenty 150-foot moveable high-tech panels created a window to a virtual world, extending the stage to new dimensions and spot-lighting Carrie Underwood and the NFL athletes. To accomplish this Zoic put in weeks of pre-production that included design and technical previz, leading up to a 2-day shoot at Warner Bros Studios (Burbank, California). Post-shoot, the main hurdle was to seamlessly integrate the singer with the football players (all filmed at different times), and of course with the CG elements as well — modeled and lit in Maya/Vray. The Zoic design team put their mark on the piece as well, using Cinema 4D and AE for motion graphics.

The piece will continue to air throughout the NFL season, to kick off the broadcast every week.

NBC Sunday Night Football (abbreviated as SNF) is a weekly television broadcast of National Football League (NFL) games on NBC in the United States. It began airing on August 6, 2006 with the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game, which opened that year's preseason. NBC took over the rights to the Sunday prime time game telecasts from ESPN, which carried the broadcasts from 1987 to 2005 (concurrently with NBC assuming the rights to Sunday evening regular-season games, ESPN took over the broadcast rights to Monday Night Football from sister network ABC beginning with the 2006 season). Previously, NBC had aired American Football League (AFL), and later American Football Conference (AFC), games from 1965 until 1998, when CBS took over those rights.

Credits
Client: NBC
Agency: Bodega Studios
Creative Director: Haley Geffen
Head of Production: Michael Flexner

Production Company: Bodega Studios (http://bodegastudios.com/)
Director: Tripp Dixon
Head of Production: Michael Flexnor
Director of Photography: Chuck Ozeas
Visual Effects Company: Zoic Studios (http://www.zoicstudios.com/)
Executive Creative Director: Chris Jones
Executive Producer: Ian Unterreiner
Producer: Nick Vassil
Coordinator: Cody Shelly
VFX Supervisor: Julien Brami
Art Director: Wes Kandel
Lead Flame: Toby Brockhurst
Flame Assist: An Dang
3D Supervisor: Sallyanne Massimini, Billy Spradlin
3D Lead: Scott Rosekrans
Senior Lighter: Christina Murguia, Jacob Long
Lead Compositor: Nicholas Daniels, Andrew Bardusk

Editorial Company: Northern Lights (http://nledit.com/)
Editor: Alan Chimenti
Executive Producer: Robin Hall

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