All Work

The Olympic Channel · YouTube Originals

World Debut: From Outsiders to the Olympics

2021 — Feature documentary

0:00 / 0:00

The challenge

What began on the fringes, skateboarding, surfing and sport climbing, arrives on the world’s biggest stage.

Tony Hawk sitting on the deck of a halfpipe, in black and white.

World Debut: From Outsiders to the Olympics follows three sports born outside the mainstream on their twenty-year road to the Olympic Games, with Tony Hawk, Emily Harrington, Kyra Condie, Sofía Mulanovich and the officials who let them in. It premiered on the Olympic Games YouTube channel on 7 July 2021.

The Olympics had invited three outsider sports to the biggest stage in the world. YouTube Originals and the Olympic Channel needed a film that both sides would recognize: honest to the culture of skateboarding, surfing and climbing, and fair to the institution taking them in.

Client
The Olympic Channel · YouTube Originals
Scope
Creative · Packaging & Sales · Production · Post-Production
Delivered
Feature documentary, 88 minTrailerOriginal 2D animationSocial teasers

The strategy

We got inside both worlds.

World Debut was made with Boardwalk Pictures and the Olympic Channel, for YouTube Originals. That partnership put us inside the Olympic movement, and Tony Hawk, our executive producer, put us inside skateboarding.

  1. 01

    The partners

    Boardwalk Pictures and the Olympic Channel, with the International Olympic Committee on board from the start.

  2. 02

    Tony Hawk

    Our executive producer opened his whole archive to the film.

  3. 03

    The Olympic archive

    Full access to the Olympic archive, so the film could walk through the history of the Games.

The animation

Where no camera was allowed, we drew it.

Some of the most important moments in this story happened behind closed doors, in the sessions where the Olympic movement decided which sports would get in. No footage of them exists. So we built a 2D animation language of our own, bold serif type and retro human illustration after Mid-Century Modern design and a Keith Haring line, and used it to tell those scenes.

What made it hard

COVID moved the Olympics a year, and the film moved with it.

We started shooting in November 2019, at Lake Tahoe, and had a rough cut by April 2020. Then COVID moved the Tokyo Games a year. The story moved too: we restarted the edit in January 2021, ran post remotely, and locked picture in May, two months before the premiere.

  • 7Countries on the shoot
  • 13Locations, from Lausanne to Lima
  • 20Months from the first shoot to the premiere
  • Lausanne — Switzerland
  • Madrid — Spain
  • Torino — Italy
  • Lima — Peru
  • Mar del Plata — Argentina
  • Palm Springs — California
  • Woodward — Pennsylvania
  • Salt Lake City — Utah
  • Tokyo — the Games

What we made

The crew filming an interview by a boulder.
Tony Hawk in the air over the halfpipe in his warehouse.
Tony Hawk skating the Nude Bowl, a crew filming from the deck.
A skater in a yellow cap, sitting at the edge of a ramp.
Mami Tezuka carving the graffiti walls of the Nude Bowl.
Setting up an interview in a room full of framed photographs.

An 88-minute feature documentary and its trailer, with original 2D animation throughout. It premiered on the Olympic Games YouTube channel, won two Gold Tellys, and the trailer has been watched more than 1.9 million times.

How we did it

How do you introduce outsiders to the Olympics?

Composed, minimal interviews for the officials; looser, free-spirited ones for the athletes. A 2D animation language of our own carried the parts no archive could show. Rage Against the Machine saw a cut and gave us the intro track.

  • 2Gold Telly Awards
  • 577KViews on the film
  • 1.9MViews on the trailer

The series

  • Film01

    World Debut

  • Trailer02

    Official trailer

Across seven countries

From the IOC in Lausanne to Madrid, Torino, Tokyo, Lima and Mar del Plata, and the bowls, beaches and crags of the United States: thirteen locations in seven countries.

The Olympic rings outside the IOC headquarters in Lausanne.
A ring of fire and a crowd at night, from the archive.
A young Tony Hawk, from the archive.
IOC officials in masks walking through a crowd.
A surfer silhouetted against an ocean sunset.
A surfer celebrating on the beach, from the archive.
A climber on an overhanging boulder, backlit.
Reporters crowding an official with phones and microphones.
Two young climbers in tears together.
A national team in red jackets at an opening ceremony, from the archive.
A young skater laughing with a friend.
Skaters on a city plaza, from the archive.
Surfers by a car on the beach, from the archive.
A surf official laughing in his office.
Two skaters hugging.
The Olympic cauldron lit, from the archive.
Two climbers shaking hands at the crag.
An animated hand gripping a climbing hold.
Three skaters sitting on the lip of a bowl under the palms.
A crowd watching a contest at night.
Performers in white at an opening ceremony, from the archive.
Tony Hawk laughing with a young skater.
Two officials reading on a sofa during an interview set-up.
A skater grinning in sunglasses.
Fireworks over an Olympic stadium, from the archive.
The Olympic rings drawn in fire.

The result

Start a project