Accor Stadium 2024 Takeover

The Accor Experience

It was a thrill to be invited by Involved agency to participate in the design and post production of the 2024 Accor Stadium Takeover, with its debut at none other than the spectacular NRL Grand Final.

The new takeover replaces the previous creative which had run since the build of the stadiums ‘Great Southern Screen’ - The longest longest high-definition straight-run stadium video display in the world, measuring an impressive 120 metres in length!

Roles

Co-Concept.
R&D
Full Post Production

Additional Credits

Agency:
Involved Design
Source footage:
Beautiful Destinations.

Brief

It was established from the start that Accor needed to showcase the beautiful hotels and destinations within their product portfolio, utilising stunning footage they had captured over the previous few years.

The super-wide Great Southern Screen needed to play in sync with the more conventional 16x9 North-Eastern screen and the 10 LED strips that ran full-pitch and at various heights through the stadium.

Approach

The Great Southern Screen is a hugely impressive display yet poses a challenge: How to display 16x9 footage on its unique super wide format and long LED screens?

Additionally there was a huge amount of footage to review.

We first cataloged each master edit using ‘Scene Detection’ in Adobe Premiere to break down each sequence at its cut points, simplifying the export of still images. These images were organized into contact sheets for every destination, a tedious but necessary task.

Next, we created ‘selects’ reels in Premiere, adjusting the footage to fit the Great Southern Screen’s specifications. This process helped us quickly identify clips that wouldn’t work, eliminating them from the conversation. These reels became essential for discussing shot choices with the client during review stages.

As the footage needed to play in sync through the stadium, including the LED’s we experimented with abstracting the footage on the LEDs into its core colour palette on a per-shot basis. We experimented with various blurring techniques before landing on a ‘medium blur’ which preserved the footage vibrancy, unlike other techniques which muddied as the colours blended. A vibrant backdrop for strong messaging.

Every available shot was cataloged from over 25 destinations to facilitate productive feedback sessions.

Mockups played an important part in communicating the vision to the client.

Testing

Two weeks prior to the event we flew to Sydney to meet the client and test the creative in an empty stadium.
A minor handful of notes later and we were back in Melbourne putting the finishing touches on the edit.

With the edit locked down we finalised a number of canvas extensions in VFX, seamlessly extending a number of shots to fit the Great Southern Screen.

The Accor Stadium Takeover will now play through all major events and will be updated at regular intervals to accommodate new footage and destinations within its core framework.