Side-by-side broadcasts will share some resources, and Nickelodeon will have its own cameras
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| Noah Eagle (left) and Nate Burleson will “share” the booth with SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star for the Nickelodeon broadcast of Super Bowl LVIII. |
The CBS Sports TV compound for Super Bowl LVIII will be a little bit larger than usual, housing production facilities not only for the CBS Sports production but also for the Nickelodeon production, which will bring the Big Game to Bikini Bottom, the realm of SpongeBob SquarePants.
“While all of the action on the field will remain, real players and the plays and everything going on, everything around the field will be in Bikini Bottom,” explained Jennifer Bryson, VP, production, tentpoles, events, and music and specials, Nickelodeon, to Sports Video Group.
The Nickelodeon effort will be a side-by-side broadcast from separate trucks alongside the main CBS trucks. Sharing resources will be important, says Shawn Robbins, coordinating producer, Super Bowl LVIII on Nickelodeon, CBS Sports, but Nickelodeon will rely heavily on its own cameras.
“What’s great,” he says, “is that we’re using the whole backbone of CBS to get this on the air. It’s all flowing through CBS Sports EVP, Operations and Engineering, Patty Power and her group and CBS Sports Executive Producer/EVP, Production, Harold Bryant and his production team, as well as our own production team. We will have access to all the game cameras, and then we will have our own cameras as well that are doing our own augmented reality.”
Nickelodeon will rely primarily on 12 cameras as its main cameras for game coverage, says Robbins. “But we will cut an independent game to what the main broadcast is doing because of the layers and layers of AR that we’re doing from our own truck and our own graphics truck.”
The Nickelodeon team did three tests at Allegiant Stadium during the regular season to make sure that the animated SpongeBob SquarePants world of Bikini Bottom via Augmented Reality (AR) maps properly over the real-world stadium. Animation studio Silver Spoon played a big part as a technical partner in the design of the graphic elements; SMT is involved technically in getting those elements into the right place. And, of course, the army of Nickelodeon animators have been working closely to bring all the characters — including Dora the Explorer, who will help explain some of the rules — to life for the broadcast.
Bryson notes that the AR graphics will make the stadium look different and more vibrant. “We’re bringing in animated characters, and we’ll have SpongeBob and Patrick in the booth. We’ll also have some characters on the field, whether it’s sideline reporters or Larry the Lobster. We’re adding more and more elements to each game, and this one will have more AR than we’ve ever done.”
Robbins emphasizes the importance of showing the real players, the plays, the real field, and the real ball. “That helps the co-viewing experience we want to deliver, where dads and moms can watch the game and [the Nickelodeon version] doesn’t interfere that much with the [main] broadcast. It just enhances the broadcast as we look to keep the kids engaged.
“It’s going to be spectacular,” he continues. “The stadium [is imagined as an abyss], and the Nick Blimp, which is now a submarine, will be able to leave the stadium and come back into the stadium. It is football reimagined in this Bikini Bottom, SpongeBob World, and it’s going to blow people away.”
CBS Sports Embraces AR, XR
The use of AR will obviously be a big part of the main broadcast and the “Nickified” show, but extended reality (XR) elements are also going to be incorporated, allowing players to appear virtually in the pregame studio set.
CBS Sports has done some specialty shoots in Kansas City and San Francisco with players on an XR stage that will transport them to different places. “One of them, of course, being Las Vegas,” Bryant notes. “We can take them anywhere we want from there.”
The portable XR stage was tested in Los Angeles from NEP Sweetwater before hitting the road for the player shoots.
“The uniqueness and the value of that stage’s not just residing in a sound stage but being able to move quickly is a backbone strength,” Jason Cohen, VP, remote technical operations, CBS Sports, points out. “We obviously didn’t find out the teams involved until recently, and we were able to execute and get the stages shipped and deployed.”
Nickelodeon also will use live-motion capture in its set located in Section 101 of the stadium. That set will bring real-world announcers Noah Eagle and Nate Burleson together with the real-world actors who will play animated on-air talent SpongeBob and Patrick.
“What our viewers will see are the animated AR characters right next to the live Noah and Nate,” says Cohen, “and it’s going to appear to our viewers that we have the best seat in the house across at the 50-yard line. The set is full of AR capabilities mixed with green-screen capabilities.”
AR will be used during the CBS coverage as well, in opening graphics displaying on the stadium field and over the Bellagio Fountain, where four studio sets will be located. “It’s really cool, interesting stuff that will make it feel Vegas, like the entertainment capital, make it feel big, and make people want to be in Vegas,” Bryant says. “But there are also AR elements that help tell the story, whether it’s something that captures a touchdown or a special graphic for a big drive of the game. We’ll use AR to help enhance the storytelling.”
Super Bowl LVIII Live from Bikini Bottom airs Sunday, February 11 at 6:30 p.m. ET / 3:30 p.m. PT, exclusively on Nickelodeon. It all kicks off with an exclusive performance of "Sweet Victory"!
From Sports Video Group:
Live From Super Bowl LVIII: Inside the CBS Sports, Nickelodeon Game Booths
CBS has a curved-rail cam to capture its team; Nick will take fans to Bikini Bottom
Historically, Super Bowl booths have not been a place where new technology transforms the viewing experience. This year, though, both the CBS Sports announce booth that Jim Nantz and Tony Romo will call home and the Nickelodeon booth housing Noah Eagle, Nate Burleson, and, yes, SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star are taking things to a new level.
“The announce booth is unbelievably spacious and state-of-the-art,” says Jason Cohen, VP, remote technical operations, CBS Sports.
Announce booths typically aren’t described as spacious, but, for Super Bowl LVIII, CBS Sports was able to install a 26- x 6-ft. curved LED screen manufactured by Planar.
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| The curve of the 26-ft. LED screen inside the CBS Super Bowl booth coupled with the curve of the camera rail will offer a variety of looks. |
“We will shoot the announcers with the LED screen as the backdrop, using a curved-rail cam,” says Cohen. “It’s a Waterbird System that Fletcher is providing, and it will use a Sony HDC-P50 camera on a wired curve track. It’s a nice, small-form-factor rail cam that fits perfectly in our booth, which has a nice curvature that is almost the inverse of the curve of the LED. We also had the P50 wired so we don’t have any audio delays and lip-sync issues.”
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| To capture announcers in the booth, CBS Sports will use a Waterbird System with a Sony HDC-P50 camera on a wired curve track. |
Two other CBS Sports studios will also be active at the stadium on game day: a small studio in the corner of the field can collapse and be out of view of spectators, and a larger studio-show set on Game Day Plaza will have a 53-ft. MovieBird jib from JitaCam.
“The [field] set will also have AR capabilities, provided by Stype,” says Cohen. “The talent will do 90 minutes of the pregame at the Bellagio, move to the Game Day Plaza set, and then, at some point, move to the field set for an incredible vantage point for pregame, halftime, and postgame.”
Into a Stadium Under the Sea
The Nickelodeon broadcast booth is arguably one of a kind. Located in Section 101, it is intended to appear to be inside a stadium not in Las Vegas but in Bikini Bottom, the undersea realm of SpongeBob SquarePants. Nickelodeon will have its own cameras coupled to 13 Unreal Engines that will transform Allegiant Stadium into Bikini Bottom, with AR elements immersing real-world hosts Eagle and Burleson and two actors in motion-capture suits who voice SpongeBob and Patrick Star in an animated Super Bowl (one major point: the on-the-field action shown will be actual, not animated).
“Their overall announcer booth is all virtual with green screen,” says Cohen.
The effect will be in full glory when cameras from around the stadium shoot across the field and look into the Nickelodeon booth, where SpongeBob and Patrick Star will be seen calling the action alongside Eagle and Burleson.
The Allegiant Stadium team has been a big help in getting both broadcasts to this position ahead of game day, Cohen says. “They’ve been incredible to partner with. We had a lot of test games here between the Super Bowl test game and three Nickelodeon tests and were able to demo and test a lot of the equipment. The Allegiant Stadium team was accommodating to work with us on those requirements and all the different truck-parking scenarios. And the space in the compound is fantastic.”
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