HOW FAMOUS FILM A ROCKY
Iconic scene rethink needed 250 extras for
ROCKY Balboa pounding along the streets of Philadelphia and up the city’s Museum of Art steps followed by a throng of cheering supporters is one of cinema’s most memorable moments.
Now an advert for gambling company Ladbrokes has reimagined the scene, from 1979 boxing film Rocky II.
Instead of neighbourhood kids, Rocky now runs with a cast of sporty characters including jockeys, footballers and dancers.
The 90-second clip has even got the thumbs-up from Rocky actor Sylvester Stallone (76) – who approved the idea over breakfast one day.
Movie specialists spent 15,000 hours on visual effects after the advert idea was pitched to Ladbrokes by creative agency Neverland.
The ad, which took six months to complete, was directed by Danish filmmaker Nicolai Fuglsig. His previous work includes the award-winning Sapeurs ad for Guinness, which featured a club of elegantly dressed men in the Congo.
Selected Works experts painstakingly went through the running scene, digitally removing all of the original cast except for Stallone.
The new version required more than 250 extras, a mix of athletes and actors, on a two-week shoot in a hangar in Budapest, Hungary. For the shoot in April, they ran across 1:1 scale sets built exactly to match the original locations in Philadelphia.
Lasers
A member of the Selected Works team had been to the locations in Rocky II to scan them with LiDAR, a system that uses lasers to create 3D maps.
Alex Fitzgerald, executive producer at Selected Works, says the new extras could then be added to the footage. He explained: “It was very intricate.
“People had to be in the right place by millimetres so we were working to really finely tuned distances. There were quite a few takes, but it was a remarkable accomplishment by Nicolai.”
One of the characters is a jockey on a thoroughbred, and while some characters such as the parachuters were CGI, the horse was real.
Alex says: “The horse was shot on camera, which