New York-based Perception has wrapped production on a new spot for ESPN Classics first live broadcast, covering the 2003 MLB Hall of Fame inauguration. Featuring a pebbled paper look and a American red, white and blue color palette, the spot's POV roams around an immense admission ticket. Video highlights of both baseball greats Gary Carter and Eddie Murray were composited along with their statistics and broadcast details into the background.
"The team at ESPN Classic were understandably very excited about their first live broadcast," says Danny Gonzalez, effects director at Perception. "They asked us to come up with a few ideas that would push the live aspect of the ceremony and the fact that ESPN Classic was the only place to see it. With that in mind, we came up with the concept of a large ticket that allowed viewers admission to this great event."
"It was a challenge to build the geography of the ticket," said Jeremy Lasky, Perception's design director. "We started with a hand-drawn storyboard, then painstakingly choreographed how the camera would move and connect with all this information that was strategically placed on its surface. Synchronizing all of that activity with the excited voiceover was no small feat, but it was the guts of the spot."
Perception team used a digital camera to shoot of a bat, glove and an official Hall of Fame baseball. Those images were then digitized and composited into various stages of the spot, culminating with the ESPN logo burning a brand in the end of the bat. The whole project was finished in a week using Adobe After Effects and Photoshop Illustrator on Apple G4 workstations.
Founded in 2002 by Lasky, Gonzalez and editorial director Brendan Werner, Perception (www.perceptv.com) is a commercial production company that has worked on more than 500 broadcast projects, garnering dozens of creative awards. Since its launch, the company has completed assignments for HBO, ESPN, ESPN Classic, Miramax, McDonald's, TV Land/Nickelodeon, Sony Music, Time Warner Cable, Playboy Entertainment, Purina and The Constitution Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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