Silver Telly Award Winner: Immersive & Mixed Reality - Digital Environments.
The Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy came to us with a challenge: capture the magnitude of the world's largest sporting event. The tournament's tagline said it all: Now Is All. We took it literally.
What if the whistle didn't just start the match – it stopped the world? Not frozen, but suspended. A single shared inhale across every timezone, every language, every story. The present moment stretched to hold the weight of every World Cup that came before, and every one yet to come.
Role: Direction. Live Action Production. Editorial. Color Grading. Design. Animation. VFX. Music.
In Mexico City, a grandfather celebrates his 93rd birthday – the same number of years since the first World Cup in 1930, when Mexico competed and he was born. Behind him hangs a photo of the 1952 Mexican national team. His gift? Tickets to the final.
In Doha, a mother awaits her first child. The ultrasound reveals the baby mid-kick, a future footballer already in motion. By the final whistle, she'll be holding her newborn.
On a Buenos Aires rooftop, friends gather to watch the opening match: Ecuador vs. Qatar. We couldn't have known Argentina would win it all – but when Messi lifted the trophy, those same friends celebrated on that same rooftop. Sometimes you get lucky.
In Japan, a freestyler films TikToks in the rain, dreaming of a bigger stage. In Germany, a sculptor welds a monument to the beautiful game.
When the whistle blows, time bends. Every story suspends. Now is all.
"The Whistle" premiered on November 20, 2022 – the opening day of the tournament – and ran throughout the World Cup on the FIFA website, across Doha's public screens, and inside the stadiums themselves.
Thunder Studios' XR stage in Los Angeles became Buenos Aires, Al Bayt Stadium, Lusail, and beyond. We built photorealistic digital environments and projected them at scale – no green screen, no compositing shortcuts. The LED volume became our lighting rig, wrapping actors in the actual glow of a Qatari sunset or Argentine dusk.
This approach demanded we complete our "post-production" before we ever called action. Every background plate locked. Every time-of-day synchronized to the actual match schedule – opening whistle at Al Bayt meant accurate evening light in Buenos Aires.
For the slow-motion sequences, we shot at 1000 frames per second on Phantom cameras. It wasn't our first time pushing time to its limits – sixteen years earlier, we'd shot our first 1000fps footage for Al Jazeera Sports, also in Qatar, helping launch their rebrand. Now we returned to help the nation welcome the world.
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