Sara Ventetuolo, Senior Producer at McCarthy, Mambro & Berrtino, came to us looking for help in posting their latest creation, a spot for Atari's hottest line of games, "Backyard Sports.” The plan was to shoot a high-energy "Sports Center" style broadcast, using kids as the anchors. The set had the look of a high-end sports show containing multiple monitors. In fact there were 16 monitors in the wide shots. The idea of course was to put specific “Backyard Sports” game play into the monitors. A cool gig. We were all over it.

BEFORE AND AFTER IMAGES          1. Desk close up showing green spill. 2.Desk with digital clean up of green spill. Images courtesy of National Boston.

The monitors behind the talent were shot with green screen and the monitors in front of the talent were filled with black using white tracking marks. The deadline was tight so we needed to split the composite between two rooms.

The film was transferred here at National using our Shadow Telecine. Rob Leaton transferred and color correct the film. The stuff was beautiful, but Rob was concerned about the green spill. We decided to make that "green sing".  The plan was to key it out. 

MMB went to Colin Cameron at Cameron Editorial for the off-line. Colin gave us a list for the base cut, using all the elements from the shoot and individual lists of game play for each of the monitors. Adam Payne, one of our Smoke Artist’s at National, was on the job and conformed lists.

Adam took the front screens with the tracking marks including the main monitor on the front of the talent desk. The tracks on the small monitors were a little tricky in the wide shot because the marks started to get lost as the shot got wider.

Adam spent a great deal of time finessing those tracks. Even though the Discreet Logic Tracker is excellent for this kind of work; in many cases it came down to frame by frame adjustments. Of course we then stuck a big product logo over the scene, and you could barely see those monitors, but it was still very rewarding for Adam to make those tracks work.

I took the green screen monitors, the green spill clean up and the logo animation. The green from the monitors was all over the glassy black talent desk and shinny black floor. The "Master Keyer" in Discreet's Flame, made my life very easy. I was able to use it to key the Game play into the green screen monitors and clean up the spill. There was some discussion with MMB's Art Director, Jamie Day, about reflecting the game play in the monitors behind the talent onto the black desk but we decided it would distract from the talent.

We needed a logo animation so we looked to National Ministry of Design for the job. Working with Jamie, Design Director Dave Allen, boarded out an animation and then created a 3d element for us to use in the animation. I sucked all the stuff into Flame and composited the logo using "Batch" and GenArts Sparks, to give it the big "Sports Show" looks Jamie was after.

The mix was done right here using Rumblestrip's Tom Love. The creative team Consisting of Sara, Jamie and copywriter Patrick Lindsay were able to jump from room to room whether it be Design, Composite or Mix. Everyone was working on the project at the same time and I think having all the work done in the same building gave MMB a huge advantage in meeting their deadline. They certainly saved some cab slips.

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National Boston's 'Smoke' Artist Steve Ball is a veteran editor and compositor who attended Emerson College before moving out to LA to kick-start his career. Fortunately, New England roots eventually lured him back to the Northeast.