Capping off a summer brimming with broadcast design projects, Toronto’s Soho Post & Graphics recently turned its attention to a Canadian institution, creating the new look for Hockey Night in Canada.

For the assignment, Soho used a combination of live-action footage of high-impact hockey scenes with cg elements, answering the challenge of creating an opening which could keep the pace of the sporting mainstay.

The rethink comes with the new hockey season and a new era of partnership between Labatt and the cbc whereby the brewery has assumed the role of title sponsor and official beer sponsor of the network’s hockey broadcasts.

Labatt has put its stamp on Hockey Night with a number of new initiatives like its pre-game show Labatt Saturday Night and the Labatt Blue Shoot Out, which brings hnic home to local fans who are invited to compete for prizes and a chance to appear ‘Out of the Blue’ on the broadcast.

Soho’s involvement began with the shop’s redesign of the hnic logo, which would appear not only on-air but in print, merchandise or any other cbc-sanctioned application. Soho then won the creative assignment with a pitch that relied on substantial use of live-action hockey footage.

The two-day, live-action shoot, which took place at a Brampton, Ont. hockey arena, was directed by Soho creative director Tony Cleave out of production company Revolver.

‘We had to create an opening to Hockey Night In Canada that was on par with all the subtlety and nuance of an nhl hockey game,’ says Cleave. The added challenge was achieving the look without using the visual reference of any one recognizable team or arena or player to spare the fierce loyalties of fans.

Cleave and the Soho team created a detailed all-cg hockey arena environment, which in itself took about a month to achieve using Alias|Wavefront software and featured a huge score clock onto which the team could map different images.

With dop Mike Andringa on camera, the live-action hockey scenes were shot using a number of Junior a and Junior b players.

The on-ice action builds to a point where control of the puck changes and a classic breakaway scenario is set up. When the player lets the shot go, the puck approaches the camera and freezes, creating the desired effect of an object suspended in time while the environment keeps moving.

On set, the camera was swung around to time at 120 frames per second as animator Rob Wells eye-matched the sight line of the shooter and the position of the puck to come right to the camera.

A real nhl puck was scanned in so that at the frozen moment every detail of the rubber disc – including Gary Bettman’s signature and the words ‘Made In Canada’ – are visible.

The puck then screams off toward the goalie and hits a mirror, a look accomplished in camera with a puck fired at 120 mph out of a compressed air cannon and a real four-by-four-foot mirror placed about 12 feet in front of the goalie with the logo revealed as the glass breaks away.

Soho created a full package, including the 30-second opener, two 10-second ids and a series of item animations for features like Coaches Corner and Satellite Hot Stove.

The Soho team included executive producer Doug Morris, technical director Alan Kennedy, senior designer Brian DeVille, animators Wells, Derek Gebhart and Andre Kuhn, and effects editor and compositor Andrew Hunter. Producer was Stephanie Liberi.

The project comes in the wake of design work Soho has recently undertaken for CBC Newsworld, Showcase and Life Network.