Brief:  

Leading into the first round of the Australian open in January 2022, Nike wanted to create a spot with British tennis superstar, Emma Raducanu, that plays on some of the negative criticism she’d received since her historic win at the 2021 US Open. 

Medium: Social 

Concept: The brief was to create a spot that showed Emma in her element; not listening to any of the hype or criticism but staying completely focused and unfazed. Everything else is just background noise. She gets on with what she does best...playing tennis. The spot needed to let her ‘work’ do the talking whilst the words ‘distracted’, ‘fluke’ and ‘one-hit wonder’ are projected on to the dark walls surrounding her. The spot ends with the quote: “World off. Game on.”  

The Target audience for the spot was Emma Raducanu, tennis and Nike fans around the world.  

The budget for the spot was £31,025 

Execution: Tag was tasked with colour grading and VFX for the spot.  

VFX: To keep the look and feel as natural as possible we shot with a black cyc set with tracking markers rather than a greenscreen. Once we had the edit in place, we then 3D camera tracked all the shots and removed all the markers to leave us with the clean infinite black space.   

We used AI technology to help with the rotoscoping of Emma, after which we were able to start testing and refining the look of the type behind her, trying out several concepts, each with many iterations before arriving at the final ‘lightbox’ look.  

The final polish came by way of a source grade which was then exported for filmout to 35mm. These were then rescanned and master graded which produced the final filmic look and an extra level of blending to the VFX. 

Colour grading: The initial colour grading brief consisted of trying to avoid the blue or cold tones which would feel moody and dark but also strike a balance between the bright whites/greys and the bright colours of Emma’s red top and the blue of the court. Nike was looking for a textured and rich aesthetic.  The intention was always to do a final grade from a film print.  With this in mind, we set a look on the Arri data to the supplied references. We then did the comp work and supplied a file to the film lab to strike a print. The final grade touches were done from this print which had taken on a lovely textured analogue feel 

Results: 

Views on Nike London IG Account: 1.6 million 

Likes on Nike London IG Account: 33,358 

Views on Emma’s IG Account: 1.1 million 

Likes on Emma’s IG Account: 137k