Premier League End of Season Closer 2024

Assistant Producer – Joe McQuoid 

Every year one of the APs in the football department is tasked with cutting our Premier League end of season closer and this year I had a moment of weakness and offered to take it on for a third time! The process usually starts with finding the right piece of music and I was set on this one quite early in the season. I asked if ‘Nothing But Thieves’ would be willing to perform their track ‘Overcome’ for us having heard it on the radio driving into work one morning - it felt perfect for a football closer. The lyrics, pace and duration all fitted with what I wanted to achieve with the piece. 

The biggest challenge was that none of us had ever directed a music video before! By filming in the new Mixed Reality Studio, we also had to work out how best to utilise the nine LED monitors on the studio floor. It’s such an impressive space and it was a great challenge working out how we could use different screens as a backdrop to the band for specific parts of the track. We couldn’t cut the full montage to run in the main screen as the season hadn’t finished yet, so we edited part of it and included as many great shots and moments as we could. As well as Premier League footage, we put together creative lighting comps in After Effects for the screens and used some of the bands world tour imagery which was cut to the track and supplied to us by their creative team. This meant a few days in Edit with Yodhvir Kandola getting all the designs and edits in the correct formats for the different sized screens, and then finally testing them when the studio was rigged for Saturday Night Football. 

In total we shot twelve takes with the band and had 39 cameras to sync in Avid. We started with a full cut of the band’s performance, but this was tricky as you can only view 9 cameras at a time on AVID multicam, so we ended up cutting three or four versions of the performance before settling on our favourite one and intercutting it with Premier League action. As the title race went to the final day we had to leave gaps at the end which meant a tight turnaround with Yod in the HDR suite adding in Klopp’s farewell, Phil Foden’s decisive goals and Pep Guardiola celebrating four historic wins in a row.

Christopher Horn - Senior Production Coordinator 

As a Studio Resource Supervisor, I work predominantly with the Football Production team and the Studio Bookings team to ensure that we accurately crew and facilitate Sky picks for football across all major football strands including the Premier League, WSL, EFL & SPFL.  

When the request came in from Mark Vesey and Joe McQuoid to help facilitate an end of season closer with ‘Nothing But Thieves’ in the MNF Studio space, I met with the team, listened to their ideas and together we explored what we could achieve. For example, we needed to know if the band was performing live or miming to the track. Did they want to record through to a gallery? Did they want assets on the video walls? Every element of this set-up required crew with the right skills to make it happen, which our bookings team then needed to source. Our staff were keen to work on the project and, after meeting with the team and having a few technical chats, we were able to provide them with the tools to make their vision come to life.  

The MNF Studio is a state-of-the-art space with bespoke screens, lighting, and AR and therefore it seemed a great location to showcase not only the band and the drama of last season, but also the scope of what the studio could fully achieve. It was truly incredible to see the space that we use routinely for Sunday and Monday Night Football transform into the set of a music video. 

Being a part of this project was incredibly fulfilling, not only being a fan of the band but also providing a platform to create a roundup of all our achievements over the year, including an amazing season of football coverage that was a labour of love from our crews. The day itself ran incredibly smoothly and the finished product speaks volumes to the talent of our teams at Sky and the breadth of work we cover.  

The Premier League closer went down so well, that the EFL wanted to do one as well, which I helped facilitate featuring the band The Kaiser Chiefs. I’m looking forward to seeing how we top it next season! 

Áine Sümer O’Flynn – Edit Assistant 

Ahead of the footage coming to us in Sky Post Production, we were briefed on the number, and types, of cameras that the footage was filmed on, including FX9s, jibs and other roaming cameras. 

This project was on Interplay, therefore we utilised the Production Management window in Avid to easily check-in media assets for Yod to use in the Edit. It was really well filmed and communication with Production via the Planning team was really clear so we were able to approach supplying the media assets in a standard and trusted method which made it a smooth delivery - success! 

The finished piece looked fantastic - from Mark’s vibrant grade to Tatjana’s immersive audio mix and, of course, Yod’s attention-grabbing and rhythmic edit. We’re already looking forward to next year's Premier League end of season closer and who the potential music collaboration might be with! 

Yodhvir Kandola – Editor

Joe first spoke to me about the project in early January; this was the first time that I was involved in a music video edit from the early stages of planning. 

We had to cut a loose montage to show the first three quarters of the season making sure that we covered all the major talking points. As for the graphics, we had a version that was sent from the band that we had to convert, plus we made about ten other versions ourselves. In the MNF Studio there are eight different screens with different dimensions, and we had to work out the best way we would have the screens showing what we wanted in sync with one another. 

In the edit we spent some time in the experimental phase coming up with the different backgrounds. We had a day in Audio and another in Grade to make sure we had the best piece that we could possibly create. Our biggest worry was all of it coming together on the last actual day of the season. Once we saw it playing out of the HDR suite it was a massive relief! 

Tatjana Radivoj - Audio Dubbing Mixer 

I really love working with Sky Sports Football, as they are regular clients with a passion for the sport and great creativity. It’s such a collaborative process and I have a great time talking about football as we work. When I was growing up football was on constantly so, even though I don’t follow a team myself, I know a lot about the game. I have been to quite a few Red Star Belgrade games in my home country Serbia, which is always great to talk about with football clients as it’s a bucket-list atmosphere to witness.  

The music for the end of season closer had great energy, and being from a musical background, I really enjoy mixing content with great music. One of the main challenges of mixing a band performance intercut with moments of football was making sure that the band wasn’t overpowered by the football. Often the aim for football VTs is to make the crowds big and loud, however for this we decided to have the crowds as a background element and keep the music at the forefront. I achieved this by adding reverb to the crowds, as well as utilising long fades in and out. 

Another challenge was that being the closer for the Premier League season, there were of course a lot of goals in the VT. I took direction from the client about which goals were the most important to highlight with sound effects, and which ones we could make less prominent sound-wise to keep the focus on the band. For example, there is a goal that lands on a big music beat, at which point I layered boom and hit sound effects to add to the big moment. The team and I are really happy with the outcome, especially with how we were able to add a lot of texture to the football moments, whilst keeping the music at the forefront. 

Mark Vesey – Senior Associate Producer 

The ambitious plan of filming with the band ‘Nothing but Thieves’ to create a Premier League final day closer for Sky Sports was a massive success. The collaboration from multiple departments within Sky made it possible to film a music video in the Sky Sports MNF studio. From this shoot, the team then created a stunning final day VT for the end of the Premier League season as well as viral clips for Sky’s various social media platforms. Everything from lighting, to filming to Post Production was done in house by Sky and it was all Produced and Directed by the exceptionally talented Joe McQuoid from the Football Department. This project demonstrates that anything is possible when the Sky machine springs into action!  

You can watch the video in full here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqW8MaaVhBo