Not of the brand, of Psyop and Cheil’s campaign, Galaxy 11. Oh, and this is only Episode 1 of the final chapter.

“The world’s greatest footballers unite as a team for the ages to challenge a mysterious force of aliens in a virtual football match unlike anything ever seen on earth.” (!!!)

Late last year, extraterrestrial invaders declared a galactic football match, aka war, in The Beginning.

During the next eight months, Samsung has released a series of cinematic clips featuring 13 of the world’s best football stars they’ve joined together as the #GALAXY11 team to protect humanity from extinction (again, !!!) Cheil Worldwide has been running the campaign on broadcast TV and online, a strategy that has won Samsung more than 110 million views.

Now, with football legend, Franz Beckenbauer, as team manager, the #GALAXY11 team “leads the charge against alien domination in Episode One of Galaxy 11: The Match”.

Cheil created the overall concept of the campaign. Psyop’s job was to explore the story and characters to develop the video, which then shaped the rest of the campaign – a step beyond the traditional directorial and production roles. Psyop and Cheil have worked together over the last year, bringing in  two experienced feature writers, Brian McCauley Johnson and Marc Hyman, to give the story is oomph.

Psyop’s Todd Mueller and Laurent Ledru directed The Match Episode 1. “Samsung is breaking through the preconceived notion of what consumers will watch, and showing marketers that if you approach content in a bold, entertaining way, people willingly engage with it online, making content that puts the energy into production can attract a new type of audience. That’s something that we truly value at Psyop as we push forward with own IP initiatives, so it is extremely rewarding to work with Samsung and Cheil,” Mueller observed.

“Galaxy 11: The Match” is a reality-bending battle of human vs. alien action fit for the big screen. Fans will enjoy the suspenseful match watching as the world’s best players handle the ball past the hyper-realistic CGI alien opposition, while the play-by-play commentary by famed football broadcaster Martin Tyler brings a sense of realism to the game at hand.

There were many creative and technical challenges to conquer. To capture the sequences, the Psyop visual effect crew flew around the world to take 3D scans of each player.  From there, Psyop’s artists textured and rigged each model to capture the likeness of our famous team.  Psyop then cast local football talent and recorded the choreographed sequences using motion capture. In addition to the motion capture, the frames were hand animated to finesse the elements and ensure the mood and look of each shot was integrated seamlessly.

To make sure the personal style of each player was kept intact, Psyop enlisted former three-time World Cup player and US Olympian, Cobi Jones, as technical director for the motion capture process. Because he had played against Galaxy 11’s players, Cobi was able to assess the 6-8 stand-in players during the MoCap process to see what acrobatic attributes each had that would best serve to mimic the pros.

Cobi explained, “We focused on the specific moves and techniques that are so identifiable for each of the players – from Cristiano Ronaldo’s step overs and his stoic free kick stance, to the Messi’s weaving runs and signature goal scoring celebration where he looks up to the heavens and puts his two pointer fingers in the air.”

The creative teams worked to highlight and incorporate the products into the experience in a way that felt natural to the storyline, to keep the campaign aligned with Samsung’s cutting edge technologies.

And yes, Episode 2 of Galaxy 11: The Match is coming soon.