SVG Sit-Down: ESPN Director Jeff Nelson on Calling the (Animated) Action on ‘Monsters Funday Football’

The altcast vet shares what sitting in the chair is like for the unique live production

As ESPN continues to expand its portfolio of real-time animated altcasts, Monsters Funday Football represents the broadcaster’s most ambitious undertaking yet. Tonight’s show reimagines the Eagles–Chargers matchup on the Monsters, Inc. “Cheer Floor,” complete with 360º camera freedom, real-time optical and tracking data, and a world built to react to every snap.

For director Jeff Nelson, the project stretches the boundaries of live sports coverage in ways few productions can. The man his colleagues call “Nelly” needs to piece together a show happening in a virtual environment, with talent sporting virtual-reality headsets, all without a traditional multiview in front of him. So, how the heck does he do it?

SVG spoke with Nelson prior to tonight’s show to detail how he prepares to direct an animated football game, what has changed over the years since the Toy Story and The Simpsons iterations, and how the creative team finds the balance between NFL authenticity and Pixar storytelling.

Jeff Nelson, a director at ESPN since 2006, will call the shots from the front bench during tonight’s production of Monsters Funday Football.

Let’s say I’m a live-sports director who has only ever directed games featuring real-life humans and not cartoon monsters. How does directing an animated football game compare with anything else you’ve ever done before?
It is similar and very different at the same time. You’re still covering a game, but the technology lets you think in a completely new way. We work with the Beyond Sports team to pick all our camera positions, and I’ve probably got about 50 options I can put into the broadcast at any time. There’s no such thing as a seat kill. I can put a camera under a player, inside the huddle, give a third-person angle behind a receiver, or even a POV from inside a helmet. You simply can’t do that with real-world cameras.

At the same time, you’re also telling these mini stories on the side. There’s Ubi out there mopping up messes in the end zone. Doors are flying by. There’s a dance party happening inside the Canister Club. You’re cutting a football game, but you’re also managing a whole world happening around it.

MORE: ‘Monsters Funday Football,’ ESPN’s Latest Live Animation Effort, Advances the Altcast Art Form Again

With so many camera possibilities, how do you manage your shot selections without a standard multiview?
That’s the tricky part. I can’t see the cameras in a traditional multiview, so I don’t know what I’m going to get until I take the shot. To deal with that, once we select all our cameras, we run a rehearsal game. Afterward, I take a still image from every camera and print it out. That becomes my own kind of storyboard wall. I can look over and know that Camera 20 is a wide shot at the 20-yard line or another camera sits deep in the crowd.

It’s not perfect, but it gives me just enough to make confident choices. Honestly, it’s fun. It feels a little like directing out of a giant graphic novel.

Nelson will pick from more than 40 cameras strategically positioned throughout a completely virtual 3D environment. The unique challenge? He has no live multiview to pick shots from.

This production also runs slightly behind the live MNF broadcast. How does that delay shape your decision-making?
It’s a huge advantage. I keep the live game feed on a monitor near me, and it’s 15-20 seconds ahead of our cut. That means I know when a deep ball is coming or a touchdown is about to happen. I can figure out the best angle to match that moment inside Monstropolis. Maybe it’s a third-person shot following the receiver. Maybe it’s a camera right at the goal line.

It also helps with the storytelling side. We can use that delay to drop Sully or Mike Wazowski into the play. If we see a big catch or a goal-line push coming, we can make that creative call right before the snap.

Speaking of Mike and Sully, incorporating characters into the action was a big part of last year’s Simpsons broadcast. How do you approach that here?
In Toy Story, Pixar didn’t want Woody or Buzz getting tackled or piled on. They were very protective of movement early on, which made sense. The Simpsons were different: the comedy allowed those characters to be part of the play.

With Monsters, Inc., Pixar is much more comfortable with Mike and Sully mixing into the game. They can get knocked over or tripped without its feeling too graphic. We’re only putting those two characters into the action, but we’ll use them the same way: reactively, based on big moments. The delay helps us decide when a Sully catch or a Mike scramble makes sense.

A significant upgrade to this year’s Funday Football operation is a more engaged and animated crowd. Unlike previous iterations, the fans in Monstropolis will react to plays on the field, especially scoring plays and turnovers.

How early does your preparation begin, and what does that workflow look like for a show this complex?
I’ve known about this one for about six months. Spike [Michael Szykowny, VP, edit, animation, graphics innovation, and creative production, ESPN] and Sparky [David Sparrgrove, senior director, creative animation, ESPN] start the creative meetings even earlier, and I join those calls weekly. Early on, I’m mostly listening and offering ideas when they make sense. We watch the movie together. We talk about which elements of the film’s world can translate to football.

It becomes real about a week out from the broadcast. That’s when we load in all the new roll-ins and animations and start to see how everything works together. We rehearse with a Thursday-night NFL game feeding the system so we can run the timing of our open, commercial breaks, and all the in-world actions. That rehearsal is also when you start finding new ideas — sometimes too late to add but fun nonetheless. This week, for example, I pitched having a made field goal land on Oop’s back. Maybe next year.

What are the biggest technical evolutions you’ve experienced since directing the previous ESPN animated broadcasts?
The crowd interaction is a big one. In Toy Story and The Simpsons, the crowd behavior was fairly static. This time, Beyond Sports built an event trigger so that, when a touchdown happens, the entire monster crowd reacts. They jump, cheer, wave their arms. It completely changes the energy of those cutaways.

We also brought more sound into play, both from the Beyond Sports system and from the sound-effects room. When a door flies across the conveyor belt, there’s now a sound cue tied to that motion. When a monster at the Canister Club dances, you’ll feel it. The world feels more alive.

The show’s on-air talent, analyst Dan Orlovsky (left) and play-by-play man Drew Carter, are animated in the game and will call the action from a mix of inside a virtual-reality headset and off standard television screens in the studio.

When you think about directing this broadcast, what’s the part you enjoy the most?
Honestly, it’s the creativity. When you do a normal game, you’re limited by physics and by where cameras can physically live. Here, the world bends to the production. You can try a shot that would never be possible in the real world, and sometimes it becomes the shot people remember.

And it’s the collaboration. Everyone brings ideas — Spike, Sparky, the operators, the sound team. We’re all trying to push the broadcast a little further each time.

What do you hope other directors or operations pros take away from a project like this?
I hope they see what’s possible when you keep an open mind. These shows teach you to stay humble. You reset everything you think you know about directing, and you start fresh. It’s exciting to direct something where no one can say, “We’ve always done it this way.” None of this has ever been done before.

And honestly, it’s just fun. How often do you get to direct football inside a Pixar universe?

ESPN’s third iteration of Funday Football, Monsters Funday Football, makes its debut on ESPN2, Disney Channel, Disney XD, and the ESPN App and returns to Disney+ and on mobile on NFL+ beginning at 8 p.m. ET. The traditional Monday Night Football telecast airs on ESPN, ABC, and ESPN Deportes.