Transcript: NBA on ESPN “Dunk the Halls” Media Conference Call

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Transcript: NBA on ESPN “Dunk the Halls” Media Conference Call

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ESPN Vice President of Production, Phil Orlins, ESPN Senior Director of Creative Animation, David Sparrgrove, NBA Senior Vice President of Broadcasting and Content Management, Paul Benedict, Chief Executive Officer of Sony’s Beyond Sports, Sander Schouten, and ESPN Play-by-Play Announcer, Drew Carter, answered questions on Thursday regarding Dunk the Halls – the first real-time, animated NBA game as the New York Knicks play the San Antonio Spurs on Main Street, USA at Disney’s Magic Kingdom this Christmas.

The live, re-creation of the Knicks vs. Spurs game airs on December 25 at noon ET and will be available on ESPN2, Disney+ and ESPN+. For more information: Dunk the Halls on ESPN Press Room.

PAUL BENEDICT: Christmas is obviously a really special day for NBA and ESPN partnership. What better way to celebrate than giving something really magical back to our fans? Innovation is an important topic near and dear in the ESPN and Disney partnership. We’re constantly exploring different ways to reach new fans and different demos. We were thrilled when ESPN approached us with this kid friendly Alt Cast. Really a fitting way to spice up such a festive day.

During the Spurs-Knicks game at noon, which kicks off our five game and thirteen hours of coverage and fittingly following the Disney Parks Magical Christmas Parade Special, fans will get to experience a first of its kind, live, animated Dunk the Halls Alt Cast emanating from a virtual Main Street, USA in Disney Magic Kingdom on ESPN2, Disney+, and ESPN+. This special presentation will feature Mickey and friends. Some of whom you saw: Goofy, Pluto, Minnie, and others.

As well as two of my friends, commentators in the live and energetic Drew Carter and Monica McNutt, who I know are really bring this to life.

It will feature animated players from the Spurs and Knicks. First Alt Cast to feature customized player animation and driven by Hawk-Eye player tracking data to make this all really come to life.

Again, we’re really, really excited for this and so appreciative of all the energy and passion for this project. They say it takes a village to put on an a full-game, original, animated broadcast from all the folks at ESPN, Disney, Sony. It’s really an understatement.

Olivia, I’ll turn it back to you and the creative folks for what will be an engine for what you’ll see on Christmas Day.

THE MODERATOR: Phil and Sander, we’ll kick it over to you guys.

PHIL ORLINS: Thanks. Hello to everybody out there. It’s great to see everybody.

Tremendously exciting project for us. Been involved with all of them other than the first Big City Greens. NBA basketball in general and NBA specifically is an awesome opportunity for us. A lot of this rests on the capability of the tracking and also opens up really wonderful visual opportunities.

It’s actually the first event that we’ve done that truly sees faces on the participants playing in the game to a much greater degree than obviously we do with football and hockey. So, I think that’s going to be a really magnetic, magical experience just to see the characters that have been created for that.

Just a quick overview, really there are two aspects of this that drive what we’re able to do. David Sparrgrove, who Liv mentioned, is our Senior Creative Director, works directly with Spike, some of you guys know, on really bringing the characters to life visually, the animations, the design, and works directly with the Disney team to collaborate on what those images look like. So, David obviously will cover that.

Then the second essential piece of everything we do is the magic that Beyond Sports, led by Sander, their co-founder and CEO, and Nico Westerhof who was on the previous call for the NFL, what that pair and that team does for us is unlike any other opportunity we’ve had to work with.

They, as you guys know, take data, and translate data into a completely unique alternative experience, which is truly amazing.

Again, the NBA offers a lot of fascinating opportunities. Sander will get into this and show a little bit of the game play now. Just before we start the video, as mentioned, we’ll have animated Spurs and Knicks players that Sparky has created the design for, and Sander’s team will bring to life. We’ll also have Goofy, Donald duck, Mickey and Minnie Mouse participating in the game. Goofy and Donald subbing in for two key players on the Knicks, and Mickey and Minnie subbing in for two key players on the Spurs. As we’ve seen on previous renditions of these games, the sort of surprise and delight that comes from those images is really important and pretty magical.

Sander will get into some more detail, but just as we show the video, I just want to point out that one of the really amazing things that they do is these are NBA players that are represented in a clever, fun way, somewhat close to real size, but the Disney characters range from a little over 3 feet tall to over 6 feet tall. I feel like goofy looks like a solid 7-footer, the character here.

It’s really amazing, when you stop and think about it, the tracking and the fact that these players — these Disney characters can be on the court working off the data of 6-1/2 or 7-foot NBA player, and yet the dribbles and the jumping and the dunks and all that looks so authentic and real for an animated character. Again, this is happening in real time. This is taking data that is placing the ball where a 7-footer jumps to dunk that has to be recreated so Donald Duck with webbed feet can make the same movement. It’s really a magical thing they do.

Let’s show that video, and we’ll give it to Sander to illuminate that. Thank you.

(Video played.)

SANDER SCHOUTEN: The video is a bit shaky on my end, but I would like to provide some voiceovers. This is the first time from the five Alt Casts that we have been doing where there is no, as we call it, backup track, as in there is no active tracker on the actual player to fall back on a single data point, as we say. This is totally relying on Hawk-Eye’s 29-point Limb-tracking System.

That’s tough for us, but on the other hand the good thing of basketball is hopefully played indoors. So, we don’t have to worry too much about environments, winds or rain or those kind of things appearing. So that makes it a bit easier for us to track. On the other hand, those guys are really big, so easier to track as well. So that makes it a bit more easy.

What it also means for us is that we — Phil touched on this already — is that we had to — our algorithms have to do a lot to overcome problems for a small character actually jumping really high. With the Simpsons Alt Cast, we had to make sure it ended up in their hands, but now we actually need to, in a believable way, in our algorithms make a small mouse get all the way up to the rim to make a dunk, if that happens in the real game.

That is truly unique, and I think a lot of people know Beyond Sports for the visual side of things we’re doing, but I think this is time to highlight the other 50 percent of our company that only works on the data, only seeing data points day in and day out to make these kinds of things work for us to experience, all the way up to the short turns, the quick dribbles, the pick and rolls that have been happening. It’s so truly believable to the eye.

For us, eventually working with the Disney characters, I could say is a dream come true. Somebody earlier asked me if I had a favorite, but this is sort of all my favorites put together. Really looking forward to it, Phil.

THE MODERATOR: Awesome. Thanks, guys. Then we will just keep things moving and go over to Sparky.

DAVID SPARRGROVE: Hello. David Sparrgrove, Sparky. I’m the Senior Creative Director for the animation team inside of ESPN‘s creative studio. I’m representing the studio in that marketing, synergy, design, animation, sound design, music, technology, and innovation all coming together to help kind of flesh out the — all of the ancillary animations around the game.

We work together with our production partners, Phil, and others, to craft a storyline. One of the unique things about our Alt Cast is that Big City Greens, the Simpsons, Toy Story, we concept a storyline. Why is this game happening? So, we all work together to come up with a storyline. The game opens up with Santa making Mickey’s wish come true and having the game on Main Street, USA.

Then our team is all about, once we have those storylines kind of decided, it’s just creating all the animations to support that.

Another thing that’s incredibly unique about these broadcasts is that everything on screen is animated, whether it’s the amazing game play that’s shown through Beyond Sports technology or these, we call them roll-ins, these roll-in animations that we cut away to around the game play.

About 80 percent, 85 percent of the Alt Cast is gameplay, but what are these other — what can these other animations do to kind of delight our audience?

I wanted to showcase a couple of the animations that we’re working on. Currently we’re working on a Dunk Contest that will be shown at halftime, and this is going to be a pretty epic four-plus minute animation. So, we have the barest of teasers that has been seen before, but it really showcases just the delight when you see a character dunking a ball.

If you want to show that Mickey dunking, that would be good.

(Video played.)

Each of the six characters will have a moment to dunk, and they’ll be scored. Then who wins is still a secret. It’s in a sealed envelope.

One of the other really differentiating things that we do is this is about audience expansion. It’s also about educating people who might not know a lot about basketball. I know that, when we worked on Big City Greens, there were — I didn’t fully understand offsides in hockey. So, we create these educational explainers to just in a fun way educate our audience onto some of the particulars of a sport. We’ve done them for all of them.

This one that we’ll show is about what is dropping a dime in basketball?

(Video played.)

Donald duck, I tell you, if he wasn’t subtitled, sometimes I’m not sure what that little rascal is talking about.

We’re going to have ten of these that talk about different aspects of the game, and I think they’re really, really wonderful. It also kind of underscores the level of animation that the team uses to create these incredible kind of teaching moments.

Then this was discussed by Paul and Phil and Sander, the players. The players, who worked incredibly tightly with the NBA to create players that everybody was happy with. It’s like the NBA is a very player forward league, and we wanted to represent the players, not only their scale, but also just their faces and their hairstyles. So, this is a level of detail that we’ve never gone, that we’ve never done on any other broadcast.

I think it’s a really, really incredible thing. This is for Chris Paul, [Victor Wembanyama], [Karl Anthony-] Towns, and Jalen Brunson. We built out 34 players, each unique, which is incredible. You never know who’s going to be coming in and out. We also went so far as to also develop the — some alt players in case something happens, and they have to be called up the day before.

It was an incredible endeavor that we worked really, really hard in partnership with the NBA on, and I think they turned out amazing. It just adds to the magical nature of this broadcast.

Then finally, our on-air talent, it wouldn’t be an animated Alt Cast without our amazing on-air talent, and we spent a lot of time developing their onscreen Avatar. If you want to show this final still. With Drew Carter, Monica McNutt, and Daisy. Daisy is a sideline reporter that Drew and Monica will be chatting with throughout the game. This is another thing that kind of differentiates us from others where we put a lot of time and effort in representing our on-air talent. Really, really cool stuff.

THE MODERATOR: Awesome. Thanks, Sparky. How about the castle in the background?

DAVID SPARRGROVE: I should mention we fully built out Main Street, USA, so we have castle in the background on one end. We have the train station on the other. Then we worked with the Disney Parks to get accurate 3D models of all of the storefronts that are there, worked very closely with them to make sure that that area was represented well.

I mean, it just — I have to say that of all of the Alt Casts that I’ve worked on, this one is beautiful. It is just beautiful. From the work that Sander with Beyond Sports has done, all the animations. We worked very, very, very closely with brand marketing and the Disney animation team, worked with legendary animator Eric Goldberg, showing him animations and getting notes from him.

It’s been a company-wide kind of collaboration, and it’s beautiful. The Alt Cast is going to be beautiful.

SANDER SCHOUTEN: If I may add to that, Sparky, you can almost feel that magic, like it’s almost tangible. That’s different from the previous ones.

THE MODERATOR: I totally agree. So great to see all of those animations, but we’ll go ahead and jump into Q&A.

While those are coming in, we’ll go to Drew Carter for our first question. Drew, I know this is your fifth animated telecast. What are you looking to for this one? And why do you think you’re the right fit to be the animated telecast guy?

DREW CARTER: Well, Olivia, I guess how you act in real life is how you act in cartoon world. I guess I’m goofy enough, no pun intended, to do the first one, and every one of them has gone really well. So, we’ll keep it rolling, I guess.

The first one I did was Big City Greens NHL almost two years ago, and at that point, I think a lot of people on this call would say the same thing. It sort of felt like a pet project kind of on the side of ESPN. Then as the months went on and more people got involved, by the time we got to that broadcast, I was like kind of nervous. I was like, dang, we’ve got a lot of people invested in this, a lot of resources invested. It’s on me not to mess it up now.

That’s honestly how I look at all of these. As we can see on this call, there’s some incredible technology and a lot of people who work really hard on these. For the announcers, it’s our job to help the viewer get immersed in it. This one will be really fun because I love Disney. I mean, you can see my hat. I still have this button on my desk from my first adult Disney trip. That actually happened. I didn’t set that up. This was actually sitting here.

I love Disney. I was kind of hoping we would have the Lakers in this game because they’ve already won a Mickey Mouse Championship a few years ago, and the jokes would write themselves if people saw Mickey Mouse actually playing for the Lakers.

Spurs-Knicks will be fun. The animation looks great. I think everyone here has done an incredible job. For some reason, basketball seems to look the best. We’ve had hockey. We’ve had football, and those looked incredible, but basketball to me is the best. So, I’m looking forward to it.

THE MODERATOR: All right. We’ll head into Q&A.

Q. Just wanted to ask, you talked about trying to make the players look realistic in working with the NBA, there’s very few players who look like Wembanyama from the size, is he 7’3″, 7’4″, 7’5″? How much work goes into making him look different than these other players on the animation?

DAVID SPARRGROVE: So, we received reference from the NBA of all the players. We put time and effort into hair and face, but with Wemby, his height really differentiates him. Sander, I think, could speak to how heights work in the game.

SANDER SCHOUTEN: It’s based on his real physique. The data points that we’re getting in are the data points that he’s sending out. So that is sort of representative. Although we’re trying to keep it within the team itself, if that makes sense.

I think, if you looked at the Simpsons, for example, the O-line was not that much different than a receiver would have been, those kinds of things. Within the team, we allow ourselves a bit of margin, but it needs to fit the overall project.

DAVID SPARRGROVE: I’ll also add real quick, Sander’s team also has technology set up that can make slimmer and kind of bulkier players. So, there’s some variation in body size.

Q. My question is for Sparky and Drew. Just off the Simpsons, when you look back and rewatched it, or just as you did it, what did you take away in terms of how you want to do the broadcast, as compared to the Simpsons, with this one?

DAVID SPARRGROVE: Well, I can speak animation-wise. Every single broadcast that we’ve done is different. It’s unique. It’s driven — a lot of what we do is driven by what the storyline is.

But there is some granular DNA that’s similar. We have a structure where we build out a full graphics package, full of traditional elements, but then also these roll-ins that we have, while that type of concept is similar to every broadcast, the content is really determined by the story.

Each one is kind of a unique beast, just based on granular.

Q. For Drew, in terms of how you do the broadcast, my question is more it’s not the traditional broadcast. The play-by-play, I think, is a little bit different than you would do when you do a normal game. How do you look at that?

DREW CARTER: Definitely. As it pertains to the Simpsons versus this one, it’s definitely a different target audience, I would say. Each one of these Alt Casts has had a bit of a different one.

The first one we did was Big City Greens, which is a show mostly watched by a younger audience, except for me. I think I’m the only adult without kids who’s watched the entire catalog. I’m probably on a list somewhere, like a watch list.

Toy Story, same thing. That kind of blended kid friendly with a nostalgic aspect. For me, when I rewatched all those movies, it was very nostalgic for me, and kids these days still love those.

The Simpsons is not really a kids show and never has been. I think people would say it peaked in the ’90s, so it’s not really geared towards a younger audience. So that one was different. That one was more about referencing things that happened in the show back then, kind of breaking the fourth wall.

Whereas this one is just leaning into the whimsy and the magic of being at Disney. So, it’s a little bit of a different target audience, I would say, which changes our job as announcers. And in terms of how it’s different from a traditional telecast, it’s way different. We have those explainers, but part of that is on us throughout the game.

We’re assuming we’ll have some people who are watching basketball for the first time or really sitting down and watching an entire game for the first time. Why is that basket worth three versus two whereas when I’m calling a traditional Celtics game, if I explain that, Brian Scalabrine would put me in a head lock. So, I need to think about how I’m thinking about certain aspects of the job for sure.

PHIL ORLINS: I just wanted to add one component we haven’t really hit on. I think over the course of these telecasts starting with the first Big City Greens and Toy Story, for various reasons, characters did not participate in the actual game play. We’ve seen a massive evolution of importance in using the central cartoon characters within the game itself, and the response to that has really been pretty obvious, like the social response and the audience feedback for that has been very, very important.

We’ve just continued to sort of refine how we do that. Not to cheat the system a little bit, but because of the data, we work on a little bit of a delay, probably will be about a minute in this game, but those are the magical little things that allow us to put — to see Homer Simpson throw two touchdowns, but at the end of the game, when Ja’Marr Chase scores the winner, Homer is the defensive back who falls down and Lisa Simpson scores the touchdown from Bart.

So, we’re getting more sophisticated how to take advantage of that and create unique, surprising, and more memorable moments.

Q. Phil, quick question for you and if anybody wants to chime in. I know that you guys use the VO booths for the first time for the Simpsons, and Drew if you wanted to chime in on this. How was the change there, and any other workflow changes compared to the Simpsons?

PHIL ORLINS: Drew could talk about that, but I think from our standpoint, the VO booths had frozen ponds — I think fundamentally the same things are happening. We put them in a studio, and we’re separating them with pipe and drape. They’re not physically aligned side by side. So, putting them in a VO booth was kind of natural and separate spaces and monitors laid out and that kind of stuff.

Having said that, just from a workflow standpoint, each one is in a different room. There will be two this time, three last time. Sometimes when we need to get things done, it was nice to have everybody in one big room, knowing that everything we asked for, everybody could go find each other, whereas I’ll also acknowledge there was a fair amount of this person go find this person, where did this person go, why are they off camera, stuff like that.

I’ll let you know they’re not really significant psychological aspects, but I would say it was a little unwieldy at times having three people in different rooms and trying to wrestle with that.

DREW CARTER: The first time we did the VR, Kevin Weekes and I were together in the studio, but separated, like Phil said, with pipe and drape. As least I could move the curtain over and throw something at him if I had to get his attention. This is different. It’s a little less janky, I would say.

It feels more legit being in the VO booths, but we could have some communication issues, especially on the NFL game we had a three-person booth with Mina and Dan. When you’re doing that for a traditional broadcast, you’re doing a lot of nonverbal communication, tapping each other, looking at each other in the booth.

We couldn’t do that, so what they set up was snoop cams. What we were looking at when we weren’t in the head set, and I called most of the game out of the head set, for my notes and something that our stats guy would hand me, but mostly so I could see because for Mina and Dan, we’d have the traditional telecast on one side and smaller boxes on the screen. I could see Dan and Mina. On the other side of the screen, it was our program. I thought that that was the easiest way to do that as opposed to being in the VR head set the entire time.

It’s cool you’re in the world. We would have been in Springfield, which we were when we were on camera because that’s how they tracked our face. But it was just kind of tough to call the game and like see who’s who when you’re inside there.

I think we’re going to do the same thing for basketball. We’re going to do a little test run on Christmas Eve and see, but with it just being me and Monica and Daisy at times, I think it will be easier for us because it’s a more natural flow with two of us instead of three.

Q. Just a quick follow-up, Sparky, on your end, I know obviously the game of basketball you mentioned is tougher. You’ve got to animate the players and customize it a little bit more. Having done it once, does this set a template to make future potential basketball animated broadcasts easier, or is it kind of reinventing the wheel with everyone?

DAVID SPARRGROVE: Really the look of the characters was born out of what was appropriate for the environment and the game. However, one of the things that I learned was just what it takes to get it right. When you’ve got just the starting lineup of 10 people, that’s one thing, but when you’re building out entire rosters, now that I know that, I think we’ve got an approach that would translate to other broadcasts.

PAUL BENEDICT: I’ll jump in there. Sparky can attest to the process. We went through our various committees, the PAs and so forth, individual teams, individual players.

As an example, NBA 2K players all go through scans to capture them. This is obviously a little different, and you want to strike the right notes in terms of being cartoonish and blending well with the Disney characters.

But in terms of the timing — and this is a total testament to Sparky and the team — we had two trades this week. It’s entirely possible we have a trade on Christmas Eve or a day before. They’ve been completely ready and prepared. The player will sit down, and we’ll turn around expecting it to be there. It’s definitely a factor.

We’ve also considered two-way players that could be called up. Might be on the bench but still be on the roster. So, we’ll certainly see. We’re certainly appreciative of what they’ve done. It’s definitely a lot.

DAVID SPARRGROVE: It’s definitely worth it. That I will say. It’s definitely worth it.

Q. I guess my question is mainly for Phil or if other people have thoughts. You touched on kind of the viral success of the moment. I think that’s something over the course of these broadcast — I mean that has jumped out — how many people are consuming this on social media or after the fact. I’m curious how that’s impacted the production both the way you’re thinking about it and also just the process of are you going to be flipping and publishing that yourselves or putting together a package yourselves, or how has that kind of pushed your thinking forward?

PHIL ORLINS: If I’m going to be truly honest, I don’t sit in the control room thinking about doing something socially viral. I sit and think about how to create great moments of content. So, it flows from there. Like I can’t really process it the other way.

It does hit me when we create them like this is — like the reaction when we get them. You’ll get them better with basketball because you’ll see them better, but like Homer’s touchdown pass to CD Lamb, and we got the animated replay of Homer dancing with the whole Cowboys offense, and I was like, man, this is incredible, this is a go. This one’s going.

But we have a team. We have a social team we work with throughout the process literally right now, as soon as this call is over, publishing our best, various pre-event content, the gameplay clips we looked at, explaining the gameplay clips. We also have, thanks to Paul and the NBA team, we have a nice collection of interviews we’ve created where Mickey and Minnie Mouse actually appear as an animated character interviewing various Spurs and Knicks. So that will go out socially.

Then during the game, really I think the way it falls, Jacob, is it’s our job to create the magic of the game that should have viral moments in that, clever calls, great moments, and all that, and our social team is screening away and sometimes shooting behind the scenes and whatnot. They take the best of that, and we leave it to them to find the right home for that stuff at the right time.

Q. I’m curious specifically, given that you chose the Knicks and the Spurs, there’s a ton of really awesome storylines. Chris Paul coming in, reigning Rookie of the Year, obviously the big blockbuster trade with KAT. I’m curious with all the excitement surrounding the teams, specifically with Drew and Sparky, a lot of people watching this don’t necessarily know basketball very well. How do you navigate from your perspective the play-by-play commentating for people that are more there for Mickey and Minnie Mouse, while still spotlighting the All-Star point guard, the Wemby type players. Then Sparky the same thing for you as well, just curious with the production just kind of how you navigate the NBA storylines with the Mickey and Minnie Mouse and the excitement surrounding that?

DREW CARTER: That’s a good question. I would say, depending on who’s watching, the main character is different for them. Like every viewer has a different perspective on this. If somebody’s watching because they love Disney and Mickey Mouse, they’re watching for Mickey and friends. If somebody is watching because they love the NBA and they want to watch something new and see how it’s presented differently, then maybe Wemby and Brunson are the main characters.

It is kind of a fine balance between doing too much basketball and doing too little because I think every viewer is going to want a different amount. It’s also a great opportunity to introduce really interesting characters to an audience that may have never seen them before. Like Victor Wembanyama, seeing him in person, is insane. It’s like seeing an alien descend on a basketball court, and I think we kind of captured that in his animated character.

We’ll have some more conversations about that, I guess, but it probably depends on who’s watching.

DAVID SPARRGROVE: Just from the creative point of view, we’re really set up to kind of magically realizing Mickey’s wish of having the game. So, I know that Drew weaves more relevant NBA, more timely elements in through kind of his commentary, but also, we have a typical graphics package. We have lower thirds and full screens and things like that.

While we will usually tailor those to be more in the world of what’s Mickey’s favorite movie, things like that, there’s opportunity to weave that in.

Then I just wanted to kind of triple down on these educational explainers where we have ten of them, and the longest one is almost a minute long that talks about the positions that make up an NBA team. I think we found, really starting with Toy Story, it’s really compelling to tell what makes up a game in an incredibly fun way.

I think everybody will remember what dropping a dime is after watching that animation. So those are really kind of critical to really educate our audience.

THE MODERATOR: Along those lines, Paul, I don’t know if you wanted to add anything about selecting this game or what the process was like on your end, just to add a little color there.

PAUL BENEDICT: Yeah, I mentioned it early on, but certainly following the Christmas Day Parade, which airs from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. was a factor. An NBA game, a matinee game at Madison Square Garden, Knicks playing in that window, I don’t know how many consecutive years they’ve played — maybe Brian Mahoney knows — but it’s become a thing for certain. Certainly, the touch point coming off the parade is definitely one thing.

I think another interesting thing to throw out is obviously Victor is a big story here. Paris is six hours ahead. This will have some distribution on InterNational League Pass and sort of primetime on Christmas Day in most of the world is 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. in some respects. So, to at least get some of these viral moments out, and our individual teams and our social accounts and ESPN are all working together as well. We think that will create a splash in attracting an international audience as well.

Q. You spent time talking about the work that went into making sure the NBA players were represented accurately. Sparky, you briefly talked about working with Eric Goldberg at Disney animation, who’s the keeper of these characters in many ways. Can you talk about the work that went in, elaborate a little bit on the work that went in to make sure the Disney characters are represented in a way that felt true to the characters when they aren’t typically represented in a real-time fashion.

DAVID SPARRGROVE: Absolutely. First of all, it was just an honor and a privilege to work with Eric. He gave us like kind of a tutorial of kind of dos and don’ts to look for. Then the Studio Tech team, which is part of Disney animation, they actually provided us with character models and rigs for all of the characters. Those were all vetted by Eric and by the team.

What we got was incredibly accurate. It set us up for success. As we were animating things, we would shoot it over to Eric. He would take a look at it, provide any notes.

I just have to say, an amazing partner to work with. They made the process really seamless for the animation team. Yeah, it’s been great.

Q. Drew, Phil mentioned earlier how this is on a little bit of a delay so they can swap characters in for those key moments. When you’re calling that, are you seeing it happen at that time as well, or do you know that a big play is coming when you’re calling one of those if a character is subbed in?

DREW CARTER: The screens I’m looking at are synced up with our broadcast. I’m not watching the real-time feed that’s a minute ahead of ours. There is a stats monitor in the room, so I can cheat if I want, but I don’t do that because you want the calls to be organic. I’m seeing it as the viewer is seeing it.

Q. Is there a tell for you, though, when you’re like, oh, a character’s been subbed in, something big’s going to happen here?

DREW CARTER: You are very observant, Andrew. We did only put the Simpsons in the game when something huge was about to happen. I sort of winked at that during the game. I was like, oh, Lisa’s in the game. I wonder if something big is about to happen. If you’re paying attention, that’s when we did it.

So, to answer your question, yes. I had a feeling that, when Lisa replaced Ja’Marr Chase and was being defended by her father, she was probably about to score.

PHIL ORLINS: Just a couple things on that. The primary — the essential reason for the delay is no matter how incredible this process is, they are processing data that takes massive amounts of data and running algorithms to interpret that data takes a certain amount of time. Then we can’t actually create the replay angles until that data gets processed. So, we slow everything down a little bit so we can create the replays and process the data.

A derivative of that — I think, if we could do it in real-time, we probably would, but a derivative of that is we have a little lead time in knowing what is going on. In the control room itself, we actually have two versions of the game, the real game playing one in real time, and then a second one we run about 20 seconds before the Simpsons telecast because, actually, if it’s much more than that, it gets complicated to actually remember what play has happened and what the best camera angle is going to be to show that.

Again, beyond what Drew referenced, the sort of inclination that generally Lisa came in for good moments, Homer came in for some good, some bad, but we are also taking advantage of that. If you really think about it closely, even just a non-Simpsons moment like CeeDee Lamb making a big play, he might go to the line of scrimmage with a third person view over his shoulder, looking back at the quarterback, and even as crazy as this sounds, even Moe made a great tackle at one key moment in the Simpsons game, and it was all shot from what appeared to be a SkyCam right over his linebacker position.

Those are the kinds of things we do with the time latency.

DREW CARTER: By the way, that is — I might be speaking out of turn here, but that’s a lot tougher in basketball than football. Football, the action is 5, 10 seconds, and it stops, and then you know. I don’t know how we’re going to do that in basketball. That’s why my job is the easy part.

PHIL ORLINS: It looks to me like goofy and Jalen Brunson have a really good pick-and-roll at the elite level.

Q. Kind of a question for Phil and then follow-up for Drew. Phil, this game is going up against a lot. You have five NBA games throughout the day plus the NFL on Netflix. What are the expectations in terms of attracting an audience for this game? Drew, to follow up on that, what’s the turnaround been like since Simpsons to get ready?

PHIL ORLINS: They’ve all been different in terms of our distribution, and they’ve all in various ways taken advantage of the Disney assets to do that. This is the first one that’s on a linear ESPN channel, on ESPN2, so we’re very curious how that’s going to react.

I would say that we are pretty optimistic about the Disney+ access, the audience at noon on the Christmas holiday. Some of the biggest successes we’ve had have been through the Disney outlets. Big City Greens was watched by a vast majority of viewers, as it should be, on Disney Channel and Disney XD and Disney+. The truth is, again, this is different because there’s obviously linear ESPN coverage and so forth, the regular game coverage.

But one thing we have come to realize, the fact that that first Toy Story NFL game was a European 9:30 a.m. eastern time game on Disney+, and I’ve learned a lot more about this since then, was a sweet spot for reaching that audience. So, I think there’s a lot of commonality between the noon Christmas Day Disney+ audience reach and what we saw for that and massively important Disney IP with Toy Story in that case and the six Disney characters in this case that is well fit for that on the holiday.

Q. Drew, the turnaround on that, I know you and I spoke, but this is a lot broader with the characters because they’ve been in multiple things. What’s that been like?

DREW CARTER: Prepping for this, it’s a lot different, I would say.

First of all, The Simpsons game, I was dialed in on that. I wasn’t even thinking about Dunk the Halls until December 10th, the day after our NFL game. I’ve kind of been cramming lately with Mickey Mouse. I can’t say, as a kid, I watched a ton of Mickey and Friends. I’m familiar with it. I’ve seen a Goofy Movie, but there was not much foundational knowledge. It has been like cramming for another test. That’s been the same with all five of these.

The nice thing is prepping an NBA game is a little more straightforward because there’s fewer players involved than NFL, and I already know most of them anyways. So that’s helpful.

Q. Kind of going off of what Drew was talking about just now, Mickey is kind of an interesting character, obviously iconic, the face of Disney, but also not like someone you watch a lot of as a kid. I was curious about the selection process of Mickey as a character as opposed to a Homer Simpson or a SpongeBob with another company. There’s not a lot of Mickey Mouse content on all the time. There’s not a lot of Mickey Mouse shows. Was it because of the multigenerational demographic you’re pursuing on a Christmas Day where it’s going to be big family gatherings that went into the choice?

PHIL ORLINS: Sparky, I don’t know if you have any feelings on that, but I think you nailed it at the end. It’s not as storyline, this is the lines we hear, there’s a very different aspect to the Simpsons with 36 years of content and sort of recurring themes and personalities.

This was really much more driven by the Christmas Day magic of Disney World and the family sort of together on Christmas Day. It’s more feel and environment, I think, than writing to a very different process with the specificity of the Simpsons humor and the relationship with Gracie Films and all that on that project. Very different with this one.

DAVID SPARRGROVE: It’s kind of a holistic approach. So, the synergistic aspect of the parade. As we were thinking about it, it’s not just Mickey, it’s Mickey and his pals. So, there’s just a plethora of content and kind of hijinks and Chip and Dale.

We could derive storylines all over the place, the rivalry of Donald and Chip and Dale. Goofy, who is historically famous for overeating. It’s like how many churros can Goofy eat during the broadcast.

It was just, as we started to look at not only the park, the parks, and Main Street USA and an environment for this to take place, we started realizing, oh, my gosh, there’s a lot we can do with all these characters. It kind of culminated with, ‘What if we put these characters in a Dunk Contest? What would that look like?’ The more we did, the more wonderful it became and the more magical it became. It’s really kind of a holistic approach.

SANDER SCHOUTEN: For me, being European or on the European side, the Mickey franchise does a lot more than Simpsons in all honesty because it relates in a different way. I think it’s more international. Maybe that’s a better way to say it. Like Simpsons, of course, U.S. focused, but this, especially on our side of the pond, works wonderful.

Q. What is next in terms of there’s not as many cartoons that Disney puts out nowadays as opposed to 20 years ago when you had ABC putting out their own original cartoons every Saturday morning. What is left in terms of a new animation that you can bring?

THE MODERATOR: I don’t think we’re going to be breaking any news today. Do you guys have anything?

PHIL ORLINS: We’re always evaluating the strength of the IP, timeliness — could be from a long history of timeliness. It could relate to something timely that’s coming out nowadays. We’re always looking at sports that are important to us from a growth standpoint. And we’re frankly always looking at the data that is the foundation of recreating the game play.

We’re just weighing all of those factors and trying to pick the next big impact event we can choose, and like Olivia said, that’s about where it’s probably going to end.

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