MARCUS SMITH SHOOTS SECOND MADDEN NFL COVER
Marcus was a natural choice to shoot the newest cover for Madden NFL 24, featuring Josh Allen, as he previously photographed the 22 cover featuring Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes.
“We shot this in studio in LA with real Buffalo Bills fans that had no idea Josh was coming until he was there!” explains Marcus. “It was a huge surprise for them. I just want to say thank you to everyone on the team that brought this together and made it one of the smoothest top secret shoots of all time!”
Scroll down to find out how Marcus shot the epic campaign.
BTS
“Often, shoots like this come with technical and logistical challenges that require a little extra planning. This one had two: we wanted to shoot in Buffalo, New York, at the Bill’s stadium, but the weather was unpredictable, with possible mountains of snow on the way; while shooting in LA also presented weather challenges because it was raining like crazy every day. So, we settled on shooting in studio, and through some careful strategizing, we recreated the game day atmosphere.
My style of shooting is intentionally a bit spontaneous, to leave room to capture authentic moments. It’s hard to do that in studio, so to keep that same energy, we needed to light the space in a way that could change extremely fast to portray different looks.
Enter 25 sky panels hanging from a truss, programed to a DMX board with some additional lighting support from LEDs, and a couple 9-source stadium lights. We also had about 40 yards of turf professionally installed in the studio so that Josh could perform full speed movements in a safe environment. We spent a day pre-programming 3-4 different light looks that mimicked different times of day. On shoot day, we could quickly switch the look.”
