Creating the CG Opening Titles for Formula E’s Ninth Season London-based creative production company, The Berry, explains the action-packed, photo-real project.
Luke Robson and Ryan Burnham have been creating cool videos since they were kids making movies in their backyards during the day and learning VFX, CGI and editing by night.
Now VFX/CGI artists and directors, the two friends go by “The Berry Boys” and are co-founders of the London-based creative production studio “The Berry”.
We talked with them about their studio, which crafts breathtaking 3D projects for clients such as Formula E, Adidas, and RedBull. They also explained how they used C4D, Redshift and other tools to team up with Formula E to create the opening titles for season 9, as well as several stand-out explainer videos for the sport.
Tell us about yourselves.
Burnham: We have known each other since we were 11 years old and have been making films since we were 15. As we grew as individuals and filmmakers—15 years later, having done our time working for many different agencies and production companies in London—it made sense to use our directing and 3D/VFX skills to work together, rather than for another film company. The Berry and The Berry Boys were formed!
Robson: We were definitely right at the forefront of VFX when it became accessible. We were jumping on the Video Copilot tutorials right from its inception. When we were kids, we’d go into abandoned warehouses and make short sci-fi action films using a run-and-gun shooting set up and over the top outfits.
We’ve really pushed ourselves over the last 15 years with filmmaking technology and are lucky enough to have worked with many global brands and agencies. We’ve managed to make CGI and VFX filmmaking our bread and butter. We love it.
Do you look for something specific in a client, and what is your team like?
Burnham: While we obviously love getting the big projects through the door, we honestly try to take on jobs that let The Berry team explore different areas in the world of 3D and VFX. We work on projects that we love and have clear passion and energy for.
Robson: Everything is changing so fast in 3D these days. No matter the program—Blender, Unreal Engine, Houdini, Cinema 4D, Redshift—everyone is getting so good now at becoming a generalist, so you don’t need this crazy big pipeline when a technically tricky brief comes in. We have several Jack-of-all-trades creators on our team, and we’re really proud of everyone at The Berry for being so agile and efficient, no matter the difficulty of the project.
Burnham: Our entire business, when it comes to CGI, is focused on generalists. Most companies love working with us because the quality they get for the budget, is mind blowing. Most importantly, they don’t want to be working with loads of different artists/producers/creatives and not knowing who is doing what. Every producer and creator at The Berry understands CGI, 3D workflows and client management, which helps projects exponentially. Everyone is synced up.
Tell us about using CGI in Motorsports.
Burnham: We’ve produced and created so many amazing projects in the motorsports scene. One of our first projects at The Berry was called Roborace. It was the first time we worked in the metaverse and with augmented reality. It's like real-life “Mario Kart.” We’ve directed and created a huge amount of CGI/VFX driven films all over the world, and it was an amazing opportunity to show off our CGI/VFX creativity.
Burnham: Formula E needed a photoreal, action-packed, CGI opening title sequence for their broadcast show. Luke and I put the creative concept together with The Berry team and pitched it to Aurora Media & Formula E. They were super impressed. We got to work with pre-production shooting live action footage of every FE driver in Valencia and developing the CGI environments and Gen3 (FE car for season 9) for our film.
Robson: Once the job got going, we put together our agile and effective in-house CGI team to handle the heavy workload. The project was a toughie, and the timeline was tight but having a team of generalists, who genuinely love what they do, helped us deliver. That's the beauty of products like Redshift. It is really easy to render out a photo-realistic image and deliver on high-quality expectations.
How did you research the science behind the cars?
Robson: It was tricky. You have to work very closely with your client when you’re developing intricate models and scenes. We worked very closely with Formula E in the pre-production stages to ensure we delivered perfect models and environments.
When you’re working on super technical, complicated subjects like an electric race car, you inevitably learn a lot about how they are made and it's super interesting. It's just one of the many benefits of working on a project like this.
Walk us through some of the explainer videos you made.
Robson: In addition to the main hero trailer for Formula E, the new racing season brought in numerous new rules and engineering components. As a result, we created a series of explainer films to complement the Opening Titles. These videos helped both existing and new fans understand and embrace the exciting format changes.
Burnham: Creating the FE explainer films was a mix of challenge and excitement. We had a blast making concise and energetic animated scenes to showcase Formula E's new format features. We used CGI animation to visualize the racing format and the rules and regulations. The Berry was able to get super creative with the explainer films in order to build an easily digestible film that both adults and kids could understand and enjoy.
Robson: The Gen 3 Explainer Film presented its own set of fun challenges, especially with one particular shot featuring the Gen 3 race car ‘exploding’ to reveal its inner components. The animation was rigged using Cinema 4D's XPresso system, which allowed us to create a simple slider that smoothly expanded and closed the car. That shot exemplifies the collaboration between 3D artists and engineers, ensuring a visually impressive aesthetic whilst being mechanically and physically accurate. We take great pride in those moments.
Are there certain types of projects you haven’t yet worked on but would like to?
Burnham: Absolutely! There are loads. We thrive on the impact of our work, and finding joy in reaching large audiences and creating amazing content is what keeps us going. Dream ads for us would be more theme related, like projects for Christmas, World Cups and Super Bowls are dreams that have yet to come true.
Robson: As loyal customers, working with Adobe on projects, like their Fantastic Voyage ad, would be a dream come true. We admire their creative cloud, Photoshop, and After Effects adverts, which showcase stunning 2D animation, vector art, visual effects compositing and CGI assets. Don’t get us wrong though, we’ve already ticked many personal project boxes!
What are you working on these days?
Robson: Ryan and I create our own VFX comedy sketches starring ourselves. You can see them on our website, and they are a real passion of ours.
We’ve also found that global brands love them! They brief us in to create similar projects for them, so we've been very fortunate to direct and create some wild VFX films for prestigious energy drink brands, shoe brands and even a wine company. Those star decent talent, though, not us.