Super Rally marked American Express’s 25th year of partnership with the U.S.T.A. — and rather than a conventional fan activation, the team at Flight School Studio built something that genuinely collapsed the line between physical and digital play.

As Junior Producer on the project, I worked across on-site logistics, vendor coordination, and day-to-day production to help bring the experience to life at the US Open. Players stepped into one of eight bays and, after a tutorial from Venus Williams herself, picked up a custom 3D-printed LED racket and hit virtual tennis balls against physical illuminated targets — the kind of interaction that sounds simple and takes months to engineer correctly.

The user interface was projected onto life-sized transparent screens, making the game visible to passersby and turning the installation into a spectacle as much as a game. It was experiential in the truest sense — designed to be watched as much as played.

Credits: Executive Producer: Pete Herzog Creative Directors: Brandon Oldenburg, Limbert Fabian Lead Developers: Kyle Barnes, Paul Medcalf Junior Producer: Taylor Cleveland Studio: Flight School Studio in partnership with Momentum Worldwide