Exclusive: How ITV made its World Cup titles with 16mm film and Life Is A Highway

“This is the fourth men’s World Cup titles sequence I’ve had the honour of producing or directing for ITV. It is a strange mix of excitement and, frankly, sheer terror when they go out into the world.

Usually, I want to hide under a rock until I know whether people like it – or at least don’t hate it. Maybe that comes from the first sequence I ever made being utterly ripped apart in the paper by Giles Smith, and being a crying mess in the corner of the 15th floor of LWT.

I think we got the next one right, and since then it has become a 20-year titles journey across football and rugby with ITV and executive director and producer, Paul McNamara.

So how did these titles come about?

My co-founder at Noah, Torquil Jones, and I talked through what we felt we should try to do. Titles sequences in recent years have been mainly animation-led. They have been really beautiful. But we wondered if it was time to get back to filming an idea and doing as much as possible ‘in camera’.

After Russia and Qatar, where the creative had to be tailored to those countries, this tournament felt like a much broader canvas.

What could we do? What about a North American road trip across all three countries? What about shooting on real film? I hadn’t done that since 2007. It was about time.

And the World Cup archive is so, so good we felt that if we shot on film, it would cut together beautifully with that.

Then came the soundtrack question, which is always hugely important. After a very brief amount of time, there was only one choice for me.

My kids grew up watching the Pixar film Cars. They absolutely loved that film, and so did I. I told my eldest, now 21, that we were going to see if we could get Life Is A Highway, and he went bananas.

For him, it was the soundtrack of his childhood. This is his first World Cup as an adult. He thought his generation would go crazy if we could get the track. His enthusiasm drove us on.

The ITV Music department did the deal with the composer and with Universal Music. Thank you to everyone involved.

We won the pitch in September last year. We either had to film before the nights became darker or wait until spring and scramble for the summer. Our incredible production team at Noah, led by Mercedes Amezola, Chris Peilow and Sophie Wears, went for it.

And they pulled it off with aplomb.

A Camper van across three countries? No problem.

Casting, characters, locations, permits, visas, film stock, processing, transfer — and a Messi and Ronaldo bobblehead, with Mbappe thrown in — all pulled together in a matter of weeks.

I’ve known director Tim Mackenzie-Smith (so he tells me) for 25 years. We worked together at ITV Sport when he was starting out in TV.

We needed creativity, flexibility, an eye for a shot and an understanding of how to make an edit feel just right. There was literally no one else I wanted.

Tim said yes straight away. To be fair, it’s not the worst job in the world. But what a job he has done, as always.

Tim and Andrew White, as DOP, hit the road with a 60-year-old Bolex 16mm film camera.

When the first footage came back, we felt we had what we hoped for. The film looked stunning. It had that feeling of summer and captured the three countries in a truly unique way.

The challenge when the team got back was that we had hours and hours of wonderful footage, and only a minute for the sequence.

Hussain Hussan is an unbelievable editor, based in Oman. He and Tim went above and beyond to get this right. I don’t know how many cuts we talked through, but it was a lot.

I think some of the editing in this sequence is as good as I’ve seen in a titles sequence.

The bonus of delivering for ITV is that there is also a need for break bumpers, closers and background shots, so footage that couldn’t make the titles will live across the shows in different ways, which is great.

The final element to consider is the sound.

Tim and I both worked at ITV for many years as runners and assistant producers, so we know the ITV archive well. The best commentary lines are burned in.

The historical elements of the edit meant we could use some of the greats from behind the mic over the years.

The legendary Brian Moore, Clive Tyldesley, both of whom I had the pleasure of working with at ITV, Huw Johns and Sam Matterface contribute.

ITV were also able to ask Mark Pougatch and Laura Woods to ease us into the piece with opening lines.

But my favourite commentary moment came when we saw Roger Milla’s corner flag dance intercut with an old guy Tim and Andy had shot in Mexico City, dancing to camera.

I remembered that John Helm said a line in 1990 that would work like a dream across both shots: “He’s the oldest swinger in town.”

Then the unsung production stars of a sequence like this come into play.

The sound mix by Paul Lane, graphic design by Adam Constable, and our internal technical team at Noah – the brilliant James Moore, who graded and delivered all 160 deliverables, aided as always by edit assistant superstar Nicholas Moysey.

So that is the story behind the ITV Titles that will play out over the summer.

I hope people like them. I really hope the music becomes the summer tune people can’t stop singing. I’m so proud of everyone who worked so hard on them.

And I know I’m biased, but I really, really love them.”

John McKenna is producer & CEO at Noah Media Group