Super Bowl LIV: Inside the Revolutionary NFL 100 All-Time Team' Mixed-Reality Pregame Presentation The Famous Group was enlisted by the league to create a first-of-its-kind MR experience By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor
Wednesday, February 12, 2020 - 3:39 pm
Print This Story
All season long, the NFL had been teasing the reveal of the NFL 100 All-Time Team on Super Bowl Sunday. When the time finally came to unveil the 100 players and 10 coaches during the Super Bowl LIV pregame festivities, more than 100 million fans watching at home and the thousands at Hard Rock Stadium witnessed a seven-minute, multicamera mixed-reality presentation unlike anything they had seen before. The ambitious and groundbreaking mixed-reality presentation was the culmination of months of work by The Famous Group (TFG), the NFL and NFL Films, and Fox Sports.
Legends. Forever.
Commemorating the #NFL100 All-Time Team at #SBLIV. pic.twitter.com/xEnUYExjFh
NFL (@NFL) February 2, 2020
The league came to us with a very unique challenge, and we were extremely grateful for the opportunity, says The Famous Group EVP Andrew Isaacson. As premium content creators and storytellers, we see mixed reality as the latest tool in our toolbox to create things that have never been seen before. The NFL 100 [project] took a tremendous amount of technical and creative work, but we could not have been happier with the results.
Months in the Making: How the Mixed-Reality Show Came Together
The Famous Group is no stranger to the Big Game, having serviced 15 Super Bowls and worked with the league as a creative-services provider regularly over the past two decades. However, the NFL 100 All-Time Team mixed-reality presentation proved to be one of the company's most complex undertakings, requiring more than six months of preparation and a team of more than 40 people primarily based at TFG's Culver City, CA, headquarters.
Last spring, the NFL invited the company to present at the league meetings in Phoenix on mixed reality, augmented reality, and the difference between the two. Isaacson detailed how AR simply overlays virtual objects on a real-world environment, while MR tracks computer-generated digital objects in a physical environment through a live camera feed, placing digital objects in a physical space with accurate camera tracking and matching the physical lighting/shadows. NFL Director, Event Presentation and Content, Tim Tubito took a particular interest in the seminar and followed up with Isaacson over the summer.
Tim said the league was going to be doing this All-Time Team ceremony and that he would love to have us involved in coming up with ideas for how to pull it off, says Isaacson. We both believed this would be a great way to potentially bring mixed reality to the table.
From a logistics perspective, the league and The Famous Group had to confront three primary challenges. First, how to present 110 members in just seven minutes since it was physically impossible to announce every name one-by-one in that time. Second, how to appropriately honor players/coaches who could not attend the ceremony or were deceased. And third, how to avoid elaborate physical sets/props to minimize the impact on the grass field and not interfere with all the rehearsals taking place at the stadium in the days leading up to the Super Bowl.
Mixed reality ended up being a solution for all three of those challenges, notes Isaacson, and also provided a way to accomplish the most important part: telling a story about those 110 players and coaches.
TFG also got a boost when it worked with the Baltimore Ravens to debut a small dose of its MR content at M&T Bank Stadium during a Thursday Night Football matchup in December. During that presentation, a giant, CGI raven swooped down into the stadium before kickoff and then appeared on the stadium's videoboards at various times throughout the game.
The Ravens project was very different from a creative standpoint, but it absolutely helped us build this [MR] pipeline, says Isaacson. [Ravens VP, Broadcasting,] Jay O'Brien and his team gave us carte blanche there in the control room and really allowed us to do a test run for what became the product you saw for the NFL 100 All-Time Team presentation.
Inside the Operation: Tech Partners and NFL Films Help Pull It Off
Once the project was greenlighted, the first step was to capture a full 3D scan of Hard Rock Stadium, which was completed in December in partnership with True Point Laser Scanning. TFG also created a full 3D animatic model showing all the virtual elements and how they would interact with the real world, as well as specifying the camera angles and cuts between them.
A big part of [the operation] was planning it all out in 3D and dialing in that 3D animatic over the course of the production, says TFG Executive Creative Director and Partner Greg Harvey. That served as our 3D visual storyboard and our guiding compass to put it all together. The show you saw on TV was about 90% the same as the final animatic that we put together. It laid out the camera cutting between the wide shot, close shots, and the mixed reality. It's basically a guidepost for how the mixed-reality elements would be placed into the [real-world] environment, so it all has to be choreographed perfectly.
The 3D scan of the stadium along with 3D animations created in Maxon's Cinema4D software were migrated into TFG's virtual-production environment powered by Epic Games' Unreal Engine. The virtual 3D scenes were created in Unreal and brought into The Future Group's Pixotope cross-reality production system, where the final MR integration was completed.
TFG also worked with longtime projection-mapping partner Quince Imaging, which built out the hardware system for the MR presentation. Quince Imaging Creative Directo
Most recent headlines
04/08/2024
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, is excited to announce Santiago Solanas as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO)....
03/06/2024
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, a...
06/05/2024
By Ilyse McKimmie
Now, more than ever
That's a phrase so often used in the last few years that I've come to dread seeing it in notes like this one. A...
06/05/2024
alt= class=wp-image-12099 data-lazy-src=/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Blog-Exabyte-Storage-Demand-960x540-1.jpg/> Demand for storage solutions has reached unprece...
06/05/2024
Around the world, Asian and Pacific Islander (API) artists continue to impact mu...
06/05/2024
Spotify is making it easier for booklovers to count down the days, hours, minutes, and seconds until a new audiobook releases. With Countdown Pages for audioboo...
06/05/2024
Get Ready to join Dan Hong as he hits the streets in his ultimate culinary journ...
06/05/2024
In this video, cinematographer Simon Rowling welcomes viewers behind the scenes as he lights a daytime-interior scene inside a coffee shop. Shooting on Panavisi...
06/05/2024
L3Harris is well positioned to support the complex and multifaceted nature of special operations forces in all domains through our agile and responsive technolo...
06/05/2024
OAKVILLE, Ontario As part of Emergency Preparedness Week, Alert Ready, Canadas national public alerting system, will be distributing a test alert to Canadians i...
06/05/2024
NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. Horowitz Research has released a new study on the viewing and media habits of U.S. Hispanic/Latine audiences that shows a dramatic decline in...
06/05/2024
RE:Vision Effects Autograph 2024.4 released! 50% Off Through May 9th
Brie Clayton May 6, 2024
0 Comments
New game-changing motion graphics & VFX featu...
06/05/2024
NBC has renewed Night Court for a third season. The courtroom comedy was on the network from 1984 to 1992, and NBC rebooted it in early 2023....
06/05/2024
ABC has revealed its summer schedule. The Bachelorette gets going Monday, July 8, with Jenn Tran the star in season 21. Celebrity Family Feud starts up Tuesday,...
06/05/2024
It's almost go-time for the Holly Springs Salamanders! The season opener is ...
06/05/2024
06 May 2024
AI and Big Data Take the Centre Stage in Central Asia at Beetech 20...
06/05/2024
FIRST LOOK AT JIM PARSONS & MAYIM BIALIK REPRISING THEIR ROLES FROM THE BIG BAN...
06/05/2024
NBC Sports and Churchill Downs Extend Historic Partnership, Kentucky Derby to Be...
06/05/2024
Beverly Hills Aerials, LIV Golf Make Australian-Broadcast History by Flying Live...
06/05/2024
Back to All News
Watch the Trailer for A Part of You - Felicia Maxime, Edvin Ry...
06/05/2024
Leadership in 12G-SDI for low impact migration to 4k production...
06/05/2024
Press release - 6 May 2024 07:31
STATEMENT CONCERNING EUTELSAT GROUP'S GROUND NETWORK Facebook
LinkedIn
Twitter
Download as PDF
Paris, 06 May 2024 ...
06/05/2024
Tyngsboro, Mass. - May 6, 2024 - Join us at InfoComm 2024 to experience the latest advancements in live production technology. From June 12-14, 2024, at the Las...
06/05/2024
To champion global movements to protect and advance equality for LGBTQ+ communities, Apple is introducing a new Apple Watch Pride Edition Braided Solo Loop, ava...
06/05/2024
Actress Matseliso Mohale has joined Muvhango'Talented actress Matseliso Mohale has joined SABC2's soapie Muvhango' as Vhangani's lover and a c...
06/05/2024
Tonight on Smoke and Mirrors: Leroy refuses to give up fighting to bury MthethoDon't miss Monday, 6 May's riveting episode of South African soapie Smoke...
06/05/2024
Intrinsic, a software and AI robotics company at Alphabet, has integrated NVIDIA AI and Isaac platform technologies to advance the complex field of autonomous r...
06/05/2024
Cybersecurity experts at the RSA Conference this week will be on the hunt for ways to secure their operations in the era of generative AI.
They'll find man...
06/05/2024
1) What is the rationale of the transaction? What is the benefit for SES shareholders?
This combination creates a stronger and more competitive multi-orbit ope...
05/05/2024
A special evening performance by multiplatinum singer Becky G will provide a memorable conclusion to TeievisaUnivision's Casa Cultura upfront event on May 1...
05/05/2024
Giant media buyer Publicis is telling network sales executives that it does not think Nielsen's new panel-plus-big-data currency is ready for this upfront....
05/05/2024
WASHINGTON Glenn Kirschner, legal analyst at NBC News, blasted the media for referring to the New York trial of former President Donald Trump as a hush-money ...
05/05/2024
Catchy Comedy's weekend marathon sees The Beverly Hillbillies on the weekend of May 4-5. The event kicks off Saturday, May 4 at 11 a.m. ET, and runs through...
05/05/2024
NBC Sports has the 150th Kentucky Derby Saturday, May 4. The coverage begins at 2:30 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock and the feature race at Churchill Downs in Louis...
05/05/2024
Back to All News
Netflix Announces New Comedy Series Roosters, Starring Jeroen ...
05/05/2024
Back to All News
Showdown Alert: Baki Hanma VS Kengan Ashura' Drops Electr...
04/05/2024
NEW YORK As the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month kicks off in May, Nielsen has released an extensive new report diving into their media habits with data sh...
04/05/2024
PHILADELPHIA As National Military Appreciation Month gets underway, Comcast has announced several new initiatives to help veterans, service members, and their f...
04/05/2024
WASHINGTON, D.C. Federal Communications Commission chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has announced a tentative agenda for the May Open Commission Meeting scheduled...
04/05/2024
The Broadband Forum has announced major enhancements to key 5G convergence standards that the group said will help advance next-generation applications, improve...
04/05/2024
Spotify Wrapped Campaign Spot Graded With DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton May 3, 2024
0 Comments
Blackmagic Design today announced that Colorist M...
04/05/2024
Three Boston Conservatory at Berklee Alums Nominated for Tony Awards An additional eight alums and two current students performed in nominated productions.
...
04/05/2024
New faces and new storylines': What to expect on Izingane ZeS'thembu...
03/05/2024
An innovative learning tool to help media and civil society better understand ho...
03/05/2024
PARK CITY, UTAH - JANUARY 21: (L-R) Actors K stutis Cic nas and Greta Grinevi i t , Director Marija Kavtaradze and Producer Marija Razgute attend the 2023 Sunda...
03/05/2024
If you aren't familiar with Danny Ocean's music, it's only a matter ...
03/05/2024
Spotify has an unwavering commitment to supporting emerging artists across all genres, to helping them launch and thrive in their careers, and to connecting the...
03/05/2024
Como uno de los sonidos de mayor expansi n en el mundo, la M sica Mexicana va m ...
03/05/2024
As one of the fastest-growing sounds worldwide, M sica Mexicana is more than jus...
Super Bowl LIV: Inside the Revolutionary NFL 100 All-Time Team' Mixed-Reality Pregame Presentation The Famous Group was enlisted by the league to create a first-of-its-kind MR experience By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor 
