High-end art direction and creative marketing executions around sport have featured in many Rosie Lee projects over the years. So to celebrate rugby in 2011 we embarked upon a creative exploration of the sport from an up-close and personal, players point of view.  
 
Our concept came from wanting to visualise the power and strength of rugby players, and freeze-frame it. In the past we’ve produced many shots of athletes moving at full speed, but we hadn’t before captured a sense of power or intensity over a prolonged period of time.
 
To harness and convey this idea we built a giant, reinforced glass tank, which we crammed rugby players into. We went to great effort to get every corner and every bit of space filled with their muscle and sinew. We then art directed photographer John Ross to capture a series of stylized images with different executions for single and multiple players.
 
To extend the concept into moving image, we filmed the shoot and used the footage to produce a short video file with atmospheric soundtrack by musical artist Scanner.

Photography by John Ross
Retouching by Alex at Happy Finish
Video Editing by Dom Leung at Trim
Cinematography by Nick Wood at STK Films
Score: Robin Rimbaud-Scanner
Production: Sylvie Champenois, Becky Humm at Still Productions

Additional thank yous: all at Rosie Lee, Chris West