Think. Believe. Jump. Create.
Client: CHL & Infront Productions
The Champions Hockey League celebrates its tenth anniversary season in 2024 / 25. To coincide with this event they have launched an exciting new visual identity based around the hypercharged energy, emotion and rawpower of a CHL game.
CHL on their new Visual Identity:
“It’s alive – feeding off and amplifying the frenzied atmosphere in the stands and the kinetic force of the players on the ice. Our arena is hypercharged, an electrified space in which this new identity pulses and plays to the rhythm, noise and drama of the game.”
As well as a set of new 10-year logos, CHL have developed an expressive and highly versatile graphic device called the Hypercharged Arena. The familiar hexagonal geometry of the Champions badge is transformed into a more conceptual space, an abstract arena which is reactive and responsive to the intensity and dynamism of the action.
Jump has worked with Infront Productions since 2017 creating graphics for the CHL broadcast titles and on-screen graphics. Our latest challenge was to incorporate their new visual identity into a bespoke Broadcast toolkit – particularly focusing on the Hypercharged Arena device.
Uzi Kakuda – Head of Infront Productions at Infront Sports & Media:
“Having anticipated the 10th season anniversary of the CHL as a fitting, celebratory occasion to introduce an updated on-screen design, Jump delivered another set of exceptional concepts for both the animated titles and graphics assets. As we at Infront Productions are very specific in terms of TV product development for our partner federations, the new CHL titles and graphics package showcase how Jump binds both outstanding creativity and technical knowledge to interpret and bring to life an on-screen design philosophy based on our creative guiding principles and objectives. We greatly look forward to presenting the new look and feel to the viewers this upcoming season.”
Lee Jacobs – Senior Art Director at Jump:
“This concept brings the new brand to life by placing real CHL players inside the Hypercharged Arena.
We’ve combined the texture and energy of a jumbotron with incredible ice hockey action. The animated Hypercharged Arena is dynamically reactive to the live action which plays out in front of it. This sequence will develop the link between CHL champions, the Hypercharged Arena and the trophy.”
LJ – “We shot 4 professional hockey players in front of a state of the art LED screen. This allowed us to capture the speed, power and flow of real players who were almost entirely lit by the abstract shapes on the screen.
Backlighting the players in this way meant that their identities remained obscured. Infront commissioned a special CHL kit using the new brand shapes for use in the titles – we had 2 colour versions to represent the opposing teams.”
Jump needed to organise a live action shoot on an ice rink incorporating a huge curved LED screen. This naturally came with a few challenges. The screen was an array of 96 sections built in an arc which were all connected to a central playout device. It was 4m high and 12m wide. The Jump team packed their hats and gloves and headed off to Wales to the Vindico Arena, home of the Cardiff Devils.
Hannah Nicholls – Head of Production at Jump:
“We initially approached numerous rinks but it became really obvious that our on-screen hockey players needed to be professionals and not just actors. When we started to look at their match schedules it was a bit of a shock – they play ALL the time. So then it was about finding a team who were open to hosting us and accommodating our slightly bonkers idea. We consulted with Infront Productions who recommended we speak to the Cardiff Devils. From the very first conversation, the Devils were incredibly welcoming and helpful.
We had an incredibly short shoot – rigging from 6am and needing to clear off the ice by 6pm in order for the arena to open to the public. Every shot was scheduled to the second! But we had an incredible team from Anna Valley who worked so hard to get the screen up and our crew were incredible at embracing the strange and slippery work conditions.”
Russell Mann – Technical Director at Jump:
“There were lots of things to consider when working out how to build this sequence. We needed to be on ice for the hockey action, that was a given. We did consider compositing the background in post, but that would have caused us many problems, not least the keying of the players and recreating the reflections in the ice. Ultimately we decided the screens with the graphics had to be real. We gained so much this way. Not only the ambient light picking out the players, but also total freedom for the camera to move with the action.
We knew we would be filming at high frame rates so that we could ramp shots – ie cutting from slow motion to fast action. The graphics in the screens therefore had to match – so we rendered all of our animations at 120fps. This meant we could eliminate jerky movements when slowing the shot footage down in our edit.
There are some scenes in the sequence built entirely with 3D but they were a lot easier to integrate having the real reference of the shoot.
We built a low sled for the camera to sit on, riding on 4 hockey pucks bolted to it. This meant the DOP could quickly slide the camera around on the ice just inches off the surface. Our other very successful prop was the wheelchair. It sounds mad but our DOP was able to keep up with the fast action with the help of a professional hockey player pushing and pulling him around!”
The original music track was provided by composer Adam Nordén under the creative guidance of Infront Productions, with additional sound design by Echoic.
Jump also needed to update the broadcast on-screen design package with the new visual identity.
Sam Clarke – Senior Designer at Jump:
“The on-screen graphics for CHL includes a multilateral package, unilateral package, stings and maps. All graphics are supplied with master files, example animations and guide frames for easy implementation.
We took inspiration from the Hypercharged Arena to inject the graphics with the dynamics and angles from the artwork. To further tie in the style with the new titles we applied an LED texture across them.
On-screen TV graphics applied in-game are naturally a constant presence and play a critical role in the perception of CHL as a sports entertainment television product. As well as helping the game narrative the graphics needed to be non-intrusive and not distract from the game itself.”