How Nexus Studios brought the BBC's Olympic love story to life

What was the brief like from the BBC? How much creative freedom did you have? 

As usual with great briefs, it was clear and simple, allowing us a lot of freedom. The BBC wanted to subvert the idea of a sports film by making a parallel between romantic love and the love athletes have for their sports. 

We had so many ideas of how to build the romance in the film and then with a delicate pull of the rug, the audience is transported into a sports film. Luckily, the BBC Creative team were very open to suggestions and new ideas.

My key goal was to create a simple emotional journey so the film would touch a wider audience rather than just sports lovers. 

How did your plan for the film evolve from conception to completion?

Sports are the most filmed events, through competitions, commercials, feature films and series. It’s hard to refresh the genre and avoid clichés. My key goal was to create a simple emotional journey so the film would touch a wider audience rather than just sports lovers. 

We tested very tight edits with live-action footage, not as frame or sport references, but more to find the rhythm. From the pitch stage, we chose the soundtrack to allow us this emotional journey with an arc. I decided to honour the traditional codes of sports film with a punchy edit and accurate athletic references, whilst also subverting it with romance, pastel colours, delicate designs and soft visuals.

Can you walk us through the different stages of bringing the project to life? How long did it take?

It took roughly 3.5 months. Although this is traditional 2D animation, the rhythm, length of shots and ambitions– showing Paris, using landmarks but avoiding clichés, showing a vast range of sports, body types, genders, and athletes from all over the world– were closer to a live-action project. 

The complex part was to recreate the look for each character with all the delicate touches, once things were moving. 

On top of that, the art direction I wanted to explore isn't common in animation, with no outlines, and subtle gradients all over the characters to create a unique look. It’s closer to making moving illustrations than a traditional animated film. 

There was a lot to figure out to achieve the look, and the character designer Antoine Bonnet, art director Callum Strachan and lead compositor Bethany Levy did a lot of back and forth to nail the process.

Did you have any particular creative inspirations or visual references that steered the aesthetic of the film?

Unlike a lot of sports films, which are intense with their high contrasts, intense colours and very sharp designs, I wanted this film to be cinematic but extremely delicate, warm, and above all elegant. I am a huge fan of the work of the character designer Antoine Bonnet and with Nexus Studios’ art director Callum Strachan we took a few weeks to test and develop a look specific to this film. 

What animation techniques did you use?

We used a traditional animation approach. Because of the nature of the fast edit, we had to animate more of the movements that were used in the edit so we could be as tight as needed. The complex part was to recreate the look for each character with all the delicate touches, once things were moving. 

The biggest challenge was sticking to the promise of the amazing artworks created in pre-production and bringing that into the final moving film. But we did it! 

It was very fiddly and we had to do that manually because each shot was a specific artwork with its own character design and background.