Inside HBO's Winning Time: How FuseFX's Frank Belina Recreated Iconic Moments From The Lakers' 1980s Dynasty

Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty brought 21st century audiences into the purple-and-yellow's most dominant decade. Dubbed the "Showtime Lakers," this Magic Johnson-led squad defined the 1980s, collecting five championships over the course of those ten years. While Hollywood recreations have no easy work, bringing moments that existed behind real life's closed doors come with a little less pressure, as audiences are seeing those conversations for the very first time. The same cannot be said for the Lakers' games themselves, as those atmospheres were broadcasted in great detail for millions to watch on network television.

That's what made FuseFX VFX Supervisor Frank Belina's role in Winning Time all the more crucial. Fortunately for Belina, he had firsthand experience of how much weight these historic sports moments carry.

"I grew up with the Montreal Canadians. One thing I can say is I totally understand and totally connect what it's like living in a city that wins," Belina told ComicBook.com. "What sports is is it just gives us memories. We think back of all those epic moments where we're just sitting at the edge of our seats and just hoping that our team's going to pull it through and somehow miraculously they do."

Some of those immortal sports memories have already made it to the big screen. Moneyball showcased the unlikely story of the 2002 Oakland Athletics. Miracle reimagined the United States's men's hockey team winning gold at the 1980 Olympic Games. Neither of those films were small feats, but they also had the luxury of operating with a feature film schedule.

"One thing about working in television production is that it's fast. It's not like you got six months and you've got all this time to kind of not only create your assets," Belina said. "You have way more time on a feature and obviously a bigger budget. The key thing when you're working in television and you want to get the ball rolling is that the first thing is you have to set up your environment."

That being said, Belina was able to find advantages within Winning Time's tight work window.

"I think the benefit of that is when you're working on a very tight schedule of short time, it allows you to build your crowd very quickly," Belina continued. "When you don't have a lot of time, you're going to burn a lot of time just trying to adjust things, but once you have it in the 2D world, you can make changes a lot faster. We would do our setups, build our shots, then we would look at it to see how our crowd is working.

"The advantage of that is you can see the things that are not working early on and that's what you want. You want to be able to foresee what kind of adjustments you'll need to make. If the crowd is too docile, you'll change it up so that you can get more expressiveness out of the crowd. That means way more energy in terms of how they move."

Recreations ride a fine line when it comes to execution. Most directors want to avoid doing a shot-for-shot remake of something that already exists, yet want to steer clear of taking too many creative liberties to where the polished product is unrecognizable from what it is based on. Belina details that Winning Time was able to maintain this balance by approaching it like it was being made in that 1980s time period.

"I think what was smart about the creators, what they did is they gave the show a feel from the 1980s. They kind of gave it that film look. Back in those days, you don't have that clear, pristine, clean-looking style," Belina said. "I think the other thing that was kind of cool was that sometimes the aspect ratio would be a little bit different. It's almost like they're cobbling all these clips and making kind of a documentary style. Once we had our crowd, we would go into compositing. We would adjust the lighting. We would adjust the grading. We would do all the little tricks just to try to make it feel like it's going to sink in with the fact that you're watching something that has a kind of broadcast feel to it."

As of this writing, Winning Time's run has ended. HBO cancelled the series after just two seasons, putting a period on a story that was expected to have a five-season arc. Despite the cancellation, Belina has hope that Winning Time could be resurrected on either another network or streaming platform.

"I think we can only hope that the series will return. I think it's a bit unfortunate that it didn't allow for them to kind complete their whole vision. I think there's a lot of stories to tell," Belina said. "I think it's a great idea. I think right now too, because of the pandemic, sports has just become a really big thing."

Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty Season 1 and 2 are currently streaming on Max.