Madden 23’s director calls on James Cameron’s Avatar camera to film in virtual reality
polygon.comBrian Murray, who in a former life lugged around 16mm cameras for NFL Films, lowers the rig onto my right shoulder. “This is the same size, weight, and balance of a camera that I would be shooting if I was on a sideline again,” says Murray, Madden NFL 23’s creative director for presentation. Yet it looks nothing like a camera.
Metal tubes approximate the skeleton of one, and some dials at the front control things like focus and zoom, but it’s mostly open space attached to a rather chunky platform. The viewfinder is an iPad, so at least I’m not squinting. But on that viewing screen are head coach Sean McVay and four or five Los Angeles Rams, coming off the field after the end of a game, rendered in Madden. And as I move the camera, I’m filming in virtual reality, walking up close on Jalen Ramsey or Sebastian Joseph-Day and getting in their faces, just as if I had a photographer’s vest and field pass.
“You may have heard of a very small film called Avatar,” Murray jokes. “James Cameron patented a technology where he was able to take a small, wired kind of pad and walk around in his digital scenes in that movie, to get authentic-feeling shots, to frame the digital scenes in that movie.”
Murray joined EA Sports from NFL Films, the league’s Emmy-winning documentary arm, to begin work on 2014’s Madden NFL 25. Murray was brought aboard specifically to tune Madden’s in-game broadcasts to more closely resemble the kind of rich cinematography football fans have come to expect from the league’s biggest games and moments — and from the even more cinematic NFL Films. Shortly after moving to Florida, Murray began implementing the VR filming system that Cameron had patented. Since then, Madden’s broadcasts have been able to film what
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