My role on the 2026 World Cup had grown compared with previous events.
Prior to the start of the event I spend considerable time forward planning workflows. During the event I was the Senior Edit Support Managing looking after a team of five including myself, with the remit of training all of the editors and graphic designers in the workflows in place at the Non Live Post Production Hub in East London. Our team also had to support the editors and designers round the clock due to the time difference from the event being held in North America and the post production being London based.
I was also involved in a number of graphic projects, and built all of the graphic elements required for the two minute highlights of every match. I also prepared automation to streamline the graphic elements required for the Enhanced Player Profiles, of which there were over 1,300 delivered.
The biggest challenge was developing the Hype Promo. This 30 second promo is based on the starting eleven for each match. The difficulty is that the team sheets are only made available at 90 minutes prior to the start of the match, and the promo was part of the live feed at 53 minutes prior to kick-off, giving a 37 minute window to obtain the information, create the promo, and send it to the gallery at the IBC in Dallas for insertion into the live feed. To achieve this I devised a workflow that involved building a library of six options of every player using the content from the Enhanced Player Profile shoot. I then wrote a Chrome Application that is used to build the promo up by choosing players and teams, and applying this information to an After Effects template. This information would control the choice of player images, the players names, the colour scheme used, and the flags.
Below is a demo video of how the Hype Promo worked.