Dunk The Halls: ESPN Refines Animated Altcast Tech and Ops With a Helping Hand From Mickey and Minnie

On Christmas Day, for the second time in just 15 days, ESPN will produce a fully animated alternate broadcast when it brings Mickey, Minnie and rest of Disney’s core cast of characters to the NBA hardcourt. Coming on the heels of The Simpsons Funday Football production on Dec. 9, the Dunk the Halls altcast of the San Antonio Spurs – New York Knicks game marks the first animated presentation of an NBA game and the first NBA game to stream on Disney+ (the game can also be seen on ESPN2 and ESPN+)

“The NBA specifically is an awesome opportunity for us…and opens up really wonderful visual opportunities,” says Phil Orlins, VP of Production, ESPN. “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.”

The two primary driving forces behind Dunk the Halls are once again ESPN Creative Studio, which designs the look and brings the characters to life, and Beyond Sports, which provides the data processing and real-time–visualization technology.

Each Spurs and Knicks player will appear as a motion-enabled, animated player for the special Christmas matchup. Through the real-time visualization technology enabled by Sony’s Beyond Sports, combined with Sony’s Hawk-Eye Innovations’ optical tracking, fans watching Dunk the Halls will see every three-pointer, dunk, layup, pass, and more from the real-life Spurs vs. Knicks game at Madison Square Garden in New York as it happens.

The virtual, live re-creation of the Spurs vs. Knicks game will be set on iconic “Main Street, USA” in Magic Kingdom Park as the teams play while Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Pluto, Goofy, and Chip and Dale cheer them on. Shots of “Main Street, USA” and other famous landmarks within Magic Kingdom Park will be regularly shown, including Cinderella’s Castle.

Based in Bristol: Animated Broadcast Production Emanates from ESPN HQ

As was the case for The Simpsons Funday Football, the entire live animated game production will be handled out of ESPN’s Bristol, CT campus, including all crew and talent.

Gaming PCs in Bristol will receive optical tracking data from the Hawkeye system installed at Madison Square Garden and Beyond Sports will use this data to render the real time game animation. However, unlike the Toy Story Funday Football and The Simpsons Funday Football productions, there is no Next-Gen Stats data from the NFL being used so all tracking will be optical.

Behind the scenes in Bristol, more than 40 people will contribute to the Dunk the Halls production, including Graphics, Production, Studio Directing, Resource Coordinators, Technical Operators, Edit team, Media Replay, Talent, and Beyond Sports support staff.

Several ESPN team members are operating inside the Beyond Sports system, watching the game unfold in a 360-degree animated space with access to over 30 different programmed camera angles to choose from.

The live show will be driven by directors Ashley Ward and Jeff Nelson with support from AD Tanner Jones, TDs Nick Potzka and Aaron Bedenbaugh, A1’s Joe Mayerski and Jason Severance, and A2 Brian Levesque. Bristol operations are managed by Mo McMeekin, while technical Operations are led by Haili Menard and Erik Barone. Media support is provided by Carl Baker, Shawn Horn, Adam Oliphant, Adam Herbert, Grace Powell, and Jason Shusteric.

“While this is my first time directing an animated alt-cast, I had the opportunity to observe The Simpsons production process,” says Ward. “As with other live productions, especially one of this nature, collaboration is key to success. With numerous moving parts and multiple departments working together, teamwork is essential to making it all happen.”

“Watching our team discover which angle is best for each play is part of the fun of working with new technology,” adds McMeekin. “You have to approach this position as if you are playing a first-person video game and are exploring the environment around you.”

A New Chapter for Beyond Sports: Relying Fully on Optical Tracking

For the first time in ESPN’s five Altcasts, Beyond Sports will not have a censor-based tracking system (like NFL Next-Gen Stats or NHL Edge) to serve as a backup. Instead, Beyond Sports will be relying wholly on Hawk Eye Innovations’ 29-point limb-tracking system.

While that provides a new challenge for the technology, Sony’s Beyond Sports CEO Sander Schouten adds that the indoor environment will simplify things for his team (since wind, rain, and snow will not be a factor). And, while the massive size of NBA players also makes them easier to track, the mix of small animated characters with these tower figures will be challenging.

“Our algorithms have to do a lot to overcome problems for a small character actually jumping really high,” he says. “With The Simpsons altcast, we had to make sure it ended up in their hands, but now we actually need to, in a believable way, make a small mouse get all the way up to the rim to make a dunk. That is truly unique.”

“I think a lot of people know Beyond Sports for the visual side of things we’re doing,” he adds. “But I think this is time to highlight the other 50% 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, and the pick and rolls. It’s so truly believable to the eye.”

Orlins points out that the Disney characters range from a little over 3 feet tall to over 6 feet tall and it is up to Beyond Sports to blend these animated rigs with data real-time from the players ranging from Chris Paul (6 feet) and Jalen Brunson (6-foot-2) to Victor Wenbanyama (7-foot-3) and Karl Anthony Towns (7 feet).

“I feel like Goofy looks like a solid 7-footer,” he says. “It’s really amazing, when you stop and think about it, the tracking and the fact that 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.”

“And this happening in real time,” he continues. “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.”

Calling the Animated Action: Workflows in VO Booths Continue to Be Refined

Play-by-play commentator Drew Carter and analyst Monica McNutt are also on hand in Bristol, calling the action out of voice-over via Meta Quest Pro headsets. Carter and McNutt – who will be joined by Daisy Duck as the sideline reporter – will be animated in the style of the telecast and experience the game from “Main Street, USA” thanks to Meta Quest Pro VR technology and Sony’s Beyond Sports’ Virtual Commentator Technology.

“For Dunk the Halls, we’re hoping to fine-tune the talent motion capture standup process,” says Nelson. “The animated PXP and color analysts are such a dynamic and fun part of the broadcast, we’d like to put them on camera a little more than we did with The Simpsons broadcast.”

One major modification will be new talent cues in the VO booths. Carter and McNutt will now get a visual notification via remote light switches when they’re about to be on “virtual camera” to cut down on IFB traffic. Menard credits Senior Technical Operations Manager Erik Barone – a VR technology champion and aficionado – with the idea for implementing these visual cues for talent.

“We are hoping both of these stay consistent to a degree, but we have modified some workflows for the talent cues in the VO booths,” says Menard. “We learned that with so much IFB communication happening, we needed a better way to let them know what’s coming.

A Whole New Ball Game: Animating NBA Players – and Their Faces – on the Court

Although many of the workflows will stay the same as they did on The Simpsons broadcast, this is the first league coverage (NBA) where the players aren’t wearing helmets. Because of this, the animated players on the Spurs and Knicks had to be more detailed in their body structure, including height, hair type, and so on.

“We worked incredibly tightly with the NBA to create players [to make sure] that everybody was happy with it,” says David Sparrgrove, senior creative director, ESPN. “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 done on any other broadcast.”

The Creative Studio team built out 34 unique players, as well as alternative options in case a trade takes place or a new player is added to the team.

“It was an incredible endeavor that we worked really, really hard in partnership with the NBA on, and I think they turned out amazing,” he adds. “It just adds to the magical nature of this broadcast. I have to say that of all of the Alt Casts that I’ve worked on, this one is just beautiful.”

The storyline behind the Dunk the Halls presentation begins with Mickey’s Christmas wish to Santa Claus to bring the NBA players to “Main Street, USA” at Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World Resort to play the first animated NBA game on Christmas Day.

“We worked with the Disney Parks to get accurate 3D models of all of the storefronts that are there,” says Spargrove. “We worked very closely with them to make sure that that area was represented well.

About 80-85% of the broadcast will be live-game action, but Spargrove and his team have also created a cavalcade of kid-friendly preproduced segments that will be scattered throughout the broadcast.

For example, at halftime of the Spurs vs. Knicks game, the Disney characters, led by Mickey Mouse, will compete in a special slam dunk contest. In addition, Santa’s Elves will operate the cameras for the game while Santa himself will operate ESPN’s “SkyCam” during the game. The Disney characters will also deliver pregame and halftime speeches to the players and decorate a large Christmas tree during the game. Lastly, fans will also get to find out if it will snow on “Main Street, USA” and see how many churros Goofy can eat.

Building on Springfield: Lessons Learned and Adjustments from The Simpsons

Nelson says that every time ESPN produces another animated broadcast, the production teams find new areas to improve upon whether it be timing, camera angles, tracking, communication, music, storylines, or other elements.

From an ops perspective, the ultra-short timeline being so close to The Simpsons Funday Football and Dunk the Halls actually made some aspects were made easier because the operations team could leave the same setups in place in Bristol.

However, back-to-back productions also meant there wasn’t as much time to implement the handful of necessary adjustments. Nonetheless, Menard and her team got the job done, tweaking some existing workflows and adding new ones.

Among the key changes for Wednesday compared to The Simpsons show will be the visual talent cues as well as providing remote access to the different gaming machines around campus, which will allow Beyond Sports to work more efficiently.

“These might sound like small changes but, little by little, it becomes a lot,” say Menard. “We learn something every time [we do an animated altcast].”

In addition to backend operations, ESPN’s production team will need to adjust its creative and storytelling strategy in transitioning from Atoms Stadium in Springfield to Main Street, USA in Walt Disney World – especially when it comes to the pacing and cadence of the broadcast.

“Delivering a production with Bart and Homer experiencing a football game will be different than Mickey and friends watching an NBA game,” says McMeekin. “From a sports perspective we have to be mindful of pace of play.  With an NFL game we have time between each play to deliver a replay or creative content, in the NBA as soon as a basket is made both teams are down the court continuing with play.  We will have to prioritize content and be strategic with what we want to show during a clock stoppage.”

ESPN’s Animated Voyage Continues: Dunk the Hall Marks Fifth Animated Outing

Dunk the Halls is the fifth chapter in Disney and ESPN’s real-time animated-broadcast effort, following in the footsteps of The Simpsons Funday Football, Toy Story Funday Football in September 2023 and editions of the NHL Big City Greens Classic in both March 2023 and March 2024. Dunk the Halls also continues ESPN and the NBA’s history of alt-cast executions using IP from The Walt Disney Co. In 2021, ESPN and the NBA teamed up with Marvel for Marvel’s Arena of Heroes, an alt-cast of an NBA regular-season game.

“It’s always incredible to see a new production like this come to fruition especially when you look back and see how much planning and prep got us to the game day moment,” McMeekin. “ESPN has a long history of being on the forefront of innovative production ideas and Dunk the Halls adds to that lineage as the first real-time animated NBA game. Being a part of any ‘ESPN first’ is an awesome opportunity and memorable experience for our team especially when you factor in the creative latitude this production introduces.”

Ward adds “I’m incredibly excited and proud to work with our team to bring this experience to our viewers. The countless hours spent preparing for The Simpsons and Dunk the Halls broadcasts, and executing them back-to-back successfully, are a testament to this group’s skill, passion, and commitment to innovation.”