Leading up to the 2014 World Cup, Logan & Sons director Ben Conrad made a short film for oil company Castrol, featuring rally car driver Ken Block and Brazilian football player Neymar Jr. The film is an extension of Conrad’s ongoing work with Block.
The short film depicts a thrilling football-inspired Gymkhana session in Brazil, appropriately entitled, Footkhana. The piece fuses burning rubber with football stunts for a one-of-a-kind match that stacks Neymar’s free-balling skills against Block’s drifts and donuts as the two compete against each other in a shootout.
“This was by far the most complex of the films I’ve done in the Gymkhana series, but it was a blast to put together,” Conrad said. “You have a superstar and his skillset and then the challenge of integrating it all into what Ken does in the car to create a union of two very different worlds. A lot of planning went into it, but some of the best stunts were on a whim. The result is a tremendously unique sports match that fans have just gone wild about.”
The integration of the two sports involved the liberal use of a variety of cameras, including GoPros, Canon 5Ds, RED’s EPIC and a Drone RC Copter to capture the action and maintain the raw filter consistent across Conrad’s Gymkhana series. In order to incorporate the football, the team had to be a lot tighter with the geography of the shots, resulting in Block’s figure 8s which allowed for the football players to showcase their tricks. LOGAN also handled all aspects of postproduction including offline editorial, VFX and color grading.
