Monday Night Football: Behind the Scenes

Feature: Page (2) of 8 - 12/03/04

Monday Night Football: Behind the Scenes The trucks, the crew, the drama of the largest prime time sports broadcast in the world

The floor plan for NMT's HD4 truck, the "A Unit" for Monday Night Football

All those cameras were shaded and configured in a vast video control area in the back of the nerve center of the entire production, a 70 by 24-foot trailer called the A Unit, which is owned by NMT Mobile Television. NMT?s President Jerry Gepner told Digital Media Net that the truck, designated by the company as HD4, cost $10 million to build, and is built of the most advanced light weight materials in order to fit more high-tech equipment inside. [See the entire DMN interview with Gepner here.] Featuring a unique jam-resistant expandable chassis, the truck is just eight feet wide when it?s packed up and moving down the highway (see graphic below) but expands to 24 feet when it?s set up on location (see graphic below). As a result, the truck has more than 640 square feet of space inside, which is unusually large for a production truck.

Click graphic for enlargement -- here's HD4, NMT's truck used for Monday Night Football.

The back of HD4, the A Unit on Monday Night Football

HD4 expanded to its full width.
Walking into the side entrance of HD4, the impression is one of close quarters compared to a typical home or office, but compared to most television production trucks, it?s a feeling of wide open spaces. As you walk into the side door, immediately ahead is an audio control room that outputs its signal in Dolby E 5.1, and it?s packed with digital audio recording and playback devices, a comprehensive patch panel on one side and a vast audio console on the other (pictured below).

Audio room in HD4

To the left, at the front end of the truck is the main control room. In that space, there is a huge bank of video monitors, each one equipped with LEDs underneath designating the camera number (or tape machine number), along with the person?s name who will be operating that device. This is the command center of the entire broadcast, with Monday Night Football director Drew Esocoff sitting front and center, keeping watch over this vast sea of video, Producer Fred Gaudelli to his left and Technical Director Joe Abbenda at the Thomson/Grass Valley HD XTenDD production switcher to Esocoff?s right.

HD4 control room with Monday Night Football director Drew Esocoff (right, in front of monitors) and Producer Fred Gaudelli (left)

Even though the production is created in 16x9 for HDTV, all the monitors except for one plasma screen on the right side display in the 4x3 format. According to personnel on-site, this has to do partly with what the director is accustomed to using, and partly because the percentage of viewers watching in HDTV is dwarfed by those still receiving the program in standard definition. On the left side, there is a plasma monitor that takes in the feeds of every tape machine (see graphic below).

According to engineers in the truck, instead of another 15 monitors, they're able to put all those on this 50-inch plasma display, saving considerable space and adding flexibility at the same time.

Even 90 minutes before air time, the tension was mounting in the control room, with director Drew Esocoff preparing various short pieces for use in between plays during the broadcast. But Esocoff also knows how to keep the tension level at a reasonable level, creating a playful, impromptu and definitely not-for-air video introduction for an esteemed colleague when he decided to go out onto the field from the truck. But even in fun, the ace director was all-business, snapping together a perfectly crafted sequence of shots with music. Crisply calling out his commands in a voice as firm as the steel underpinnings of the truck in which he sat, there was no doubt who was in charge. A veteran of numerous Super Bowls, it was obvious that here sat arguably the best director in television.

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