EA FIFA 07 mo-cap sessions

Wayne Rooney whacking a pinata, Ronaldinho trying to juggle, Juninho playing the fiddle, David Villa ironing his shirt. Not what you'd expect from some of the world's top footballers. I'll let Eric explain:

The final shot in the FIFA 07 TV campaign required green screening athletes Ronaldinho, Rooney, Villa and Juninho. They were to fly in for the shoot over two days in Barcelona, and the guys at EA told us that after the athletes had been shot we could get about half an hour with them. Any ideas?

So we put them in motion capture suits and pretended this was a behind the scenes look at the extreme level of detail that goes into making a game like FIFA 07. At first it all seems feasible. We capture them doing stretches, basic ball skills, etc. But then we wanted these things to enter bizarro world.

The best part of all of this was the athlete co-operation. While the agents and every one at EA were absolutely shitting themselves somewhat apprehensive when we revealed our plans, the athletes were completely up for having a laugh.

At one point I asked Rooney if I could throw a football boot at his head and he nonchalantly said, ‘sure’. So I launched a boot at him, and he nearly ducked his head into it as his agent loudly piped up, “that’s 30 million dollars worth of talent in front of you – we’ll only do one take of that one”.

At one point we had Ronaldinho punching a large boxing bag. He decides, unprompted however, to do a big karate kick on the bag and as he hits it we hear him wince and come down very gingerly on his leg. We couldn’t help but imagine a season-ending injury coming out of the most ridiculous shoot ever. We literally would have had to get in the car and drive straight out of Barcelona before we were lynched.