Project

Monday Night Football | 2019 Open

Production Team:

Creative Director ESPN (Co-Director) – Lucas Nickerson
ESPN (Co-Director) – Chris Mantizaris
Co-Director (Evolve Studios) – Jeff Venable
Executive Producer – Joel Edwards
Producer – Paige Demarco
Director of Photography – John Matysiak
Production Designer – Joseph Sciacca
Editor – Jeremy Edney
Graphics & Animation – Man vs. Machine

 

As the NFL celebrates its 100-year anniversary in 2019, Monday Night Football is approaching 50 years of being a groundbreaking event that changed the trajectory of football as we know it.

To help celebrate these monumental anniversaries, ESPN decided to completely redo, refresh and reimagine its entire Monday Night Football visual package which included new graphics, new hosts, fresh studio sets — and a new take on the show opener, which for the last 20 years has featured legendary country rocker Hank Williams Jr. asking the more than 11 million weekly viewers, “Are you ready for some football?”

Client

ESPN

Content

Promo

Services

Live Action

Monday Night Football | Case Study

Reinventing a clasic

As the NFL celebrates its 100-year anniversary in 2019, Monday Night Football is in its 50th year of being a groundbreaking event that changed the trajectory of entertainment & football as we know it.

To celebrate these monumental anniversaries, ESPN reimagined and rebranded its entire Monday Night Football visual package which included new animations, graphics, and a fresh new booth – all kicked-off by a new show opener, which has featured legendary country rocker Hank Williams Jr. asking the more than 11 billion weekly viewers, “Are you ready for some football?”

ESPN’s own award-winning NFL Draft package, which featured a fast-paced, highly crafted and editorial-centric animation approach was where ESPN’s in-house design team pulled from their own inspiration to create the network’s new NFL animation package.

We collaborated with ESPN Creative Director Lucas Nickerson and Chris Mantzaris on this new vision for the new MNF Opener. The edit showcases the extensive animation and edit package that was heavily influenced by ESPN’s creative collaboration with Los Angeles design house extraordinaire – Man vs. Machine.

Reimagining a cultural staple that’s been an American pastime on Monday nights for nearly half a century and giving it a futuristic facelift wasn’t an easy task. But that sort-of challenge is exactly what fuels the team at Evolve Studios.

future retro

Evolve Co-Director Jeff Venable partnered with Nickerson and Mantzaris to develop a brand new scenario for Hank, that still celebrated everything we love about Hank.

"We had to take this classic persona and song and fit in this future, retro world," nickerson said. "we loved the motif of classic hank, so the goal of our art direction was to incorporate that nostalgia, but with the modern twist that espn was looking for."

Our early conversations with the ESPN team generated the question of how to make this classic persona and song fit in a “Future-Retro” world. We loved the motif of classic Hank, so the goal of our art direction was to incorporate that nostalgia, but with some modern energy – that energy hits the airwaves moments before we kick-off the primetime game each and every Monday night.

Taking this futuristic twist on a classic idea and bringing it to life involved our production and art departments scouring thrift stores, antique shops and online marketplaces to assemble a massive collection of props that ended up filling our entire studio space as we prepared for the shoot.

That in itself was a beast, but on top of that, our team spent several days in the back of the studio hand painting every single item white to fit in with our imagined white world. The art team also built custom flats with 3D polygon paneling, and a massive LED lighting structure that hung from the ceiling on set.

“We wanted to have an old recording studio take on a futuristic look; so we really relied on art and lighting to pack a visual punch,” Venable said. “And, because it's cut so quickly we knew we also wanted fun, fast and BIG activation moments... like our Mad-Max style guitar/pyro pedal.”

This juxtaposition of past and future worlds culminates in a powerful light display that allows for a seamless transition between Hank’s studio shots and hyped fans filling the stadium of the actual game. This explosion of light provided the perfect blend with fireworks and visuals offered by each stadium in the moments before kickoff.

All of this was captured on film in one day of shooting. When you only have Hank for one day, you make it happen in one day.

Established Partnership

The creative collaboration between Evolve and ESPN has been ongoing across multiple creative projects. We have worked directly with the network to produce two seasons of ESPN’s original series “Draft Academy,”  we have several other projects in development and regularly collaborate with ESPN Features on short films.

The Monday Night Football show opener is exactly the kind of project that gets our team up in the morning. Early. And fuels our energy late at night. We embrace the most imaginative ideas possible and then geek out over how to capture them on film.

We eat production challenges for lunch. You need 100 old-timey radios and reel-to-reel recorders? Done. The entire set needs to be fabricated in a clean, matte-finish? Easy. We’re just going to need an 8,000-square-foot sound stage, 30 buckets of white paint, a few cases of beer and a truckload of pizza.