When it became clear that the Mustafa V. Koç Sports Award ceremony would be held “online” due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was clear that we would be deprived of the physical facilities of the event stage. However, this time, we had the opportunity to design an award ceremony that would be watched by the whole of Turkey at the same time.
Koç Holding's decision to continue distributing the Mustafa V. Koç Sports Award despite the pandemic presented us as event designers with new challenges and new opportunities. We needed to completely change the format of the award ceremony, which we had realized for the previous three years with the extensive possibilities of the event stage, for online broadcasting and redesign the entire ceremony in video format. Our priorities were to preserve the culture and visual identity of the awards, create interesting content that would keep viewers glued to the screen, and most importantly, capture the excitement of the award handover on screen.
We started by completely changing the technical flow of the previous year and creating a brand new narrative with new content. When choosing the location for the shoot, we paid attention to creating an atmosphere in line with Olympic values and preserving the visual world of the award.
This time, we started the ceremony with summary images of the awards distributed in previous years. To spice up the flow, we produced a clip of Tony Britten, the composer of the main theme music of the Mustafa V. Koç Sports Award, explaining how he prepared the music.
Due to pandemic precautions, we filmed all speakers in their own locations. For example, we filmed our keynote speaker Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee, abroad. We softened the transitions between the speakers with the texts of our presenter Selim Yeğin.
The fourth winner of the Mustafa V. Koç Sports Award was world champion national gymnast İbrahim Çolak. For the announcement of the award, we brought Caroline N. Koç, the President of the Jury, and İbrahim Çolak together on the set we had prepared at the Adülmecid Efendi Mansion. We also filmed İbrahim Çolak's thank you speech at the same venue and completed the ceremony by adding it to the documentary film telling his story.
Although the award ceremony was broadcast virtually, İbrahim Çolak's story is real. Another reality is that, whatever the circumstances, Koç Holding will continue to distribute the Mustafa V. Koç Sports Award and support successful athletes.
