Our Creative Director, Jeffrey Pritt, takes us behind the scenes to look at a few of the award-winning special effects created for the Arizona Coyotes 2019 Intro Video.

Video Transcription: 

Hey everyone, and welcome to another edition of How It’s Made with PEG. I’m Jeffrey, and today we’re taking a look at some of the animations we created for the Arizona Coyotes intro video.

Let’s start by watching a couple of the scenes in their final form.

[Plays Scene]

Okay, let’s rack that back—watch that one more time.

Alright, now let’s break it down. The key frame we’re focusing on is this one right here. Let’s take a look at how we made it.

This is the final composite. Like most visual effects, the final version ends up in After Effects, and this one in particular was heavily built in there. Surprisingly, it’s not made up of as many layers as you might expect.

Let’s go layer by layer.

Up top, we have the actual hockey rink. Now, we didn’t physically carve this into the sand—there would have been issues with footprints, time constraints, and other practical challenges. So, this rink was entirely done in post. We created a realistic-looking sand overlay that aligns with the natural texture and tracking of the shot.

Everything in this scene is tracked into place with keyframes so that it feels realistic as the drone flies through. You can see all the tracking data right here.

Now, let’s talk about the base plate—the original scene we filmed. You’ll notice it’s much dirtier and grungier than the final product. So let’s walk through how we cleaned that up.

Let’s turn off the hockey rink overlay for a moment. You’ll see we have a “spot correction” layer. If we compare the original to the corrected version, you can see all the elements we painted out.

We had markers placed in the desert to match the exact dimensions of a hockey rink. These allowed us to keep everything to scale in post-production. You’ll see additional markers here and here, forming a classic rectangular layout. It’s a standard tracking technique.

We also removed a few distracting elements—like this big splotch from water or a soil variation, and over here, some trash that had been dumped in the woods, including what looks like the back enclosure of a pickup truck. All of that was cleaned up to help viewers focus on the illusion we were trying to create—not real-world clutter.

Once we cleaned that up and dropped in the rink, we finalized the composite.

Now onto the second clip:

[Plays Scene]

Let’s rack that one back again.

Awesome. This clip transitions us from the desert scene to the live-action arena portion.

Let’s walk through how we built this. First, this shot was filmed out in the desert—directly overhead, top-down, kind of like those “Tasty” cooking videos. Real hands, real sticks, real sand.

Now, let’s talk about the puck. In the source clip, the puck was slightly out of focus—we prioritized the sand’s texture. But we knew we could fix the puck in post, so we did. We replaced it with a sharper version.

Then, the Coyotes provided us with this scoreboard shot from inside the arena—captured with a robotic top-down camera. It’s a common arena camera angle, and we used it to match our desert shot.

We couldn’t zoom all the way in on their footage because the quality would’ve broken down. So, we built an intermediary layer in Photoshop. This was a custom-made asset that replicated the arena ice with scratches, the Coyotes logo, and everything else you'd expect. It served as the “bridge” between our tight desert shot and their wide arena footage.

Then it was just a matter of matching camera zooms and timing. You’ll notice the motion blur—this helps blend the transition and hides any minor inconsistencies.

And lastly, the dust cloud—totally fake. It’s an added VFX element that follows the puck as we zoom out, helping everything feel like one cohesive motion. The whole effect turned out great, and we’re really happy with how it came together.

Thanks again for watching this edition of How It’s Made with PEG. I’m Jeffrey, and we’ll catch you in the next one.