The Boys in the Boat

The film tells the story of a crew of working class students from Washington who beat the elite universities of the East Coast and then Hitler's Germany, so the rowing had to convince anyone who has ever sat in a boat. That meant 1930s wooden eights and launches on English water standing in for Seattle, Poughkeepsie and Berlin, crews of real rowers who could hold a period stroke for take after take, and a fleet of camera and safety boats that could follow them at race pace without appearing in shot.

Protean Sports brought an international rower's knowledge of the sport to that problem, working across departments through six months of pre-production and filming on script review, period art direction, athlete sourcing, the construction of props and equipment, and the logistics that made the on water sequences possible.

Pre-production ran across five areas of the film, each one shaped by what rowers would recognise as right.

• Script review, checking the rowing in the story against how the sport was raced and coached in the 1930s
• Period art direction, so the boats, oars, kit and boathouses matched the era
• Athlete sourcing, finding rowers who could hold a period stroke on camera, take after take
• Props and equipment construction, including 12 bespoke rowing boats handcrafted by artisans in Richmond, England
• Logistics, moving the fleet, crews and equipment between six locations on a changing schedule

The work covered the picture boats the audience sees, the fleet that filmed and protected them, and the logistics of moving all of it between six stretches of water. More than 30 period boats were sourced, bought or hired and dressed for camera, and 12 bespoke rowing boats were crafted by hand for the film by artisan boatbuilders in Richmond, England. Among the period fleet were Old Nero, a sixteen seat training barge brought up from Richmond, the Pietra Santa, bought and painted white to play coach Al Ulbrickson's launch, wooden Pocock eights, a Union Bay rowboat and traditional Thames skiffs, with a Leander Club launch brought in through the club.

On the biggest days the water held up to fifty craft and more than two hundred people at once. Camera boats carried jib arms, low rigs and drones to run alongside the eights at race pace, safety boats and trained water rescue swimmers worked every take, and up to eleven Olympic eights raced together for the Berlin final, with rowers recruited from Oxford college and club crews.

The Boys in the Boat opened in the United States on Christmas Day 2023 through Amazon MGM Studios and internationally through Warner Bros. Pictures, carrying the sport of rowing to a far wider audience than it usually reaches. The races on screen were shot on water Protean Sports helped plan and fill, with period boats, real crews and the rowing culture of the Thames behind them.

For Protean Sports the film shows the same instinct that runs through the hospitality and Home Turf work, which is that sport lands with an audience when it is authentic to the people who live it. Knowing the boats, the clubs and the rowers well enough to put the 1930s back on the water is the kind of sporting authenticity a studio, a brand or a hotel is buying.