BABOLATRAFAEL NADAL × ROLAND-GARROS 2025

The entire film was produced in eight days. That constraint defined the production methodology from day one.

Instead of relying on a traditional linear CGI pipeline — modelling, rendering, compositing, revisions — we built the project as a real-time environment. Cameras, lighting, animation, environments and visual effects could be adjusted directly inside Unreal Engine, allowing creative decisions and technical production to happen simultaneously.

It meant shorter feedback loops, faster iterations and the ability to keep developing the idea until the final stages of production.

For the final sequence, we needed the camera to travel far beyond the scale of the original footage. Paris therefore became part of the 3D production itself.

Using Google Earth as a foundation and reference, we reconstructed the required areas of the city in 3D and integrated them into our Unreal environment.

The objective wasn't simply to recreate individual buildings. We needed enough geographical scale and visual continuity for the camera to move naturally from the original scene into a much wider view of Paris without the transition feeling like a conventional cut from footage to CGI.

The city effectively became one giant virtual set.

The final travelling shot was one of the central technical challenges of the project. Rather than treating the real and virtual sections as separate sequences, we designed the camera movement as a continuous transition between physical footage and the 3D world.

Perspective, scale, movement and timing had to remain coherent while the camera progressively left reality behind.

Once inside the virtual environment, we were no longer limited by a physical camera. The shot could continue travelling across Paris, expanding the scale of the film while maintaining the visual language established at the beginning of the sequence.

The entire 3D sequence was built and rendered through Unreal Engine. Working in real time meant our team could navigate through Paris, reposition cameras, modify lighting, adjust timing and evaluate the final image immediately.

Instead of waiting for long offline renders after every creative decision, we could essentially work inside the finished shot.

For a project with an eight-day turnaround, that wasn't simply a production advantage. It was what made the project possible.

FOOH — Fake Out Of Home — often relies on a single visual trick. For this project, we approached it differently.

The illusion had to work as a film first: camera movement, scale, lighting, environment and VFX all had to contribute to the same idea. The objective wasn't simply to place an impossible object into an image. It was to create a believable physical world around an impossible event.

That meant combining the immediacy of social content with techniques closer to VFX, virtual production and cinematic world-building.

The project reflects the type of pipeline we increasingly build at TURBODIESEL: real-time production as a creative tool, not just a rendering technology.

From previs to final shots, the same environment could be used to design, test and produce the film. No separation between creative development and technical execution. One engine. One virtual world. One continuously evolving film.