NHL 25 Reveal Trailer
Electronic Arts
Role: Principal / Senior Editor
Client: Electronic Arts
Production Company: Electronic Arts
Another year and another Reveal project. This year I was asked to rejoin the NHL Team to help ideate and edit the NHL 25 Reveal Trailer with them. With new changes within the organization, this project was run a little differently. I was partnering up with Visual Content Supervisor – Man Hong and Creative – Cole Nowicki to come up with a fun creative concept and take it right through to final execution.
We worked closely together to create a ripo that clearly communicated the new functions and AI coming to the game. Before we had final builds of the game and before we’d even been on the shoot we had a clear plan of what we needed to capture (both in-game and live on-ice) and we had our music track already signed off. This was a big deal as I’ve never had that happen before while working here. This gave us a massive head-start and meant we could really focus on what we needed to get from the Hughes brothers rather than a load of b-roll that we would then build a narrative from after.
The shoot took place in Detroit as that’s where the brothers were during the off season. We filmed at Hazel Park Ice Arena there and took over the NHL sized rink for 3 days. We had a separate entrance to keep the identities of our athletes a secret and also took over 2 changing rooms that would also be used for the the cover shoot and social content. It was a great location as it felt very grass roots and was also where Luke grew up playing.
This year was a huge year for the franchise as our Cover athlete was not only one of the best current NHL players, but 3 of them… and they’re all brothers. We wanted to make a real song and dance around not only having Quinn involved but his brothers Jack and Luke too. And with our reveal trailer being the first time the information went live we had a real opportunity to do something different. For this we were keen to piggy back off the cover shoot session to film all 3 Hughes brothers on the ice together, so we started to build the edit around that idea. We wanted to cut seamlessly between capture & live action and show how they were huge influences in this years technology advancements and helping change the future of the game.
Anyone that knows of the Hughes knows that they aren’t really ones for playing up to cameras and focus a lot of their energy into their skills and what they do best. So to get the most out of them we decided to setup the shoot almost like a competition between them to try and get that brotherly competition coming out of them. This seamed to work quite well at the shoot as they were chirping each other and giving us an insight as to what it must have been like growing up in the Hughes household. And for this project I finally managed to go on a shoot at EA. After 7.5 years and I finally managed to get back out there and problem solve in-person rather than be given a hard-drive full of rushes. This proved to be very valuable on the day as our film time got cut in half and myself and Man Hong had to pivot on a few shots but ensure we got what we needed to create the trailer we had pitched to leadership.
We had 2 cameras running at the same time. Cam A was more bespoke shots of close-up action and Cam B was long lens docu-series style shot. For this we hired 2 local talented cinematographers; John Anderson Beavers who was very comfortable filming while skating and Sean Mouton who was able to capture some stunning shots on and off the ice. These guys were great and were really able to hustle when we were running out of time.
Here are some shots from the shoot and hopefully this won’t be the final time we work this way:
Along with the footage we captured, Man Hong also interviewed each brother so we would have soundbites we could use throughout the cut and throughout the campaign. During the shoot and after cameras had stopped rolling I was able to quickly drop shot into the edit and keep the team back at the studio up-to-date. This was a fantastic way of working as we could get instant feedback from them and if there were any major issues we still had chance to get something on day two if needs be.
When we arrived back at the studio we were able to then work with the capture team to create those seamless moments where we would cut between live-action and in-game content. With the game still being built this proved difficult but after a lot of hard work from the capture artists we got it there. Also, with our music track being signed off so early we were able to work with Source Sound on a custom composition rather than cutting around the track. We used AI to build stems from the track as it was a live recording and this gave us the flexibility we needed to build the narrative as we wanted to. Source were fantastic to work with and always bring the best out of our edits.
Our numbers were heavily effected by the trailer leaking online 4 days early, but even with that it still seems to have gone down pretty well with the chel community and we hope it’s a strong start to the campaign.
There are still a lot of things to be worked out using this production method but there are also a lot of positives to be taken from it and how we can work in the future. It’s always great to work with teams who want to do something a little different and not just do things the way they’ve always been done. Thanks to all involved and look forward to working with you all again soon.
