"YOU ARE LOOKING LIVE! The Show That Changed Sports Television Forever" is a one-hour CBS Sports documentary chronicling "The NFL Today," the groundbreaking studio show that revolutionized sports broadcasting. Premiering during Super Bowl LVIII coverage in February 2024, the special featured never-before-seen archival footage and interviews with broadcasting legends, including Brent Musburger, Jayne Kennedy, and Jim Nantz.

As lead Unreal Engine artist, I recreated the iconic 1975 "NFL Today" set through extensive historical research and meticulous asset development. Working from archival photographs and video references, I optimized the stage geometry, modeled hero props, and created tileable architectural textures with custom master materials that enabled efficient editing throughout production. Period-accurate finishes were essential—from specific wood grain patterns on the broadcast desk to fabric textures on seating and backdrop elements that defined the era's visual language. My lighting design replicated 1980s broadcast aesthetics, capturing the warm tungsten glow and practical set lighting characteristic of that period's studio shows.

The complete virtual environment was optimized for Paramount's green screen stage with Stype camera tracking, balancing broadcast-quality output with real-time performance demands. Using Unreal Engine 5's rendering capabilities, I configured the scene to work fluidly with tracked cameras, ensuring parallax, depth, and perspective shifts matched physical camera movements precisely. This technical orchestration created a seamless illusion that contemporary interviews were taking place in the original 1985 studio, allowing past and present to coexist authentically on screen.

This project required deep expertise in both virtual production workflows and historical visual aesthetics—understanding not just how to build real-time environments, but how to capture the specific look and feel of 1980s broadcast television. The documentary aired to millions of viewers during CBS's Super Bowl Sunday coverage, successfully transporting audiences back to 1985 while delivering contemporary insights on sports broadcasting's evolution. This work showcased virtual production's unique power to resurrect historical spaces with photorealistic accuracy, serving both creative storytelling and the demanding technical requirements of live network television.

Below are links to a VFX breakdown of the documentary and the environment used for the backgrounds, as well as a live 50th anniversary celebration broadcast using a version of this environment further optimized for live broadcast from this years NFL season.