How the mixed-reality Carolina Panther works

Jon Slusser, The Famous Group Owner, explains how his company created a mixed-reality panther that appeared to jump around Bank of America Stadium.

Video transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

- It's football season. And if you were watching the highlights of the game last weekend, you might have caused this viral video of a Panther-- now this is ahead of the Carolina football game on Sunday-- leaping around the stadium. Well, we've got the company behind this very, very cool technology. And for that, we want to bring in Jon Slusser. He's the owner of the Famous Group. And Jon, lots of people were very excited about this. Certainly, it was all over social media over the past several days. I guess just talk to us just about what goes into something like this and what you see as the future of this when it comes to sports.

JON SLUSSER: Yeah, thanks so much. This has been a wild few days for our company. We're thrilled at the response because it has taken a lot of work. And you talk about what it takes. It takes a lot of people, a lot of time, and a lot of technology to put this together. Because it's really a video game that we're superimposing into a live broadcast. And that is a complicated feat. But the results have been amazing. I mean, people from all over the world have been contacting us and wondering how this is done and also wanting to do it themselves for their events. So we couldn't be, we couldn't be more thrilled.

- I'll talk a little bit about that in a second. But first, because I know you did something similar with the Baltimore Ravens a couple of years ago before the pandemic. But how it, how is what we saw last Sunday, how is that different from what we saw from you guys two years ago?

JON SLUSSER: Well, yeah, the raven was a great viral hit as well. And people really liked it. I think that one was one of our first times using mixed reality. And that was a night game. And so I think the realism of the lighting and things really threw people off, as you can see here, it looks really great. I think the difference with this one is the interaction with the environment. When you see these 3-D characters in a live shot seemingly interacting with the stadium, with the field, with the goalposts, it really throws you off. People haven't really seen that before, especially knowing it's a live broadcast.

So and you can move that, the camera operator can move that in any direction they want to look around this world. So it's a really, really complex, but really cool effect and it wasn't easy, but you've got to give credit to the Panthers. I mean they're the ones who've taken the risk. They're the ones who believed in this technology and believed in us. And it paid off because they got, it's gotten a lot of attention. And we're really proud of it.

- Jon, how long does something like this take to create? Are we talking a couple of weeks? Are we talking a couple of months, a year? I mean, just give us a better sense of the timeframe of something like this.

JON SLUSSER: Yeah, something like this would take about two months, about 8 to 10 weeks, of planning from creative, from the creative idea to building it out ahead of time, building the models, and then showing up on site. So it takes a lot of hardware. It takes a lot of preparation on site and working with the live production team. Because although it's not there in the stadium, meaning if you're sitting in your stands, you don't see it.

You see it through the broadcast. You see it through the jumbotron, through all the screens on the arena. That's one of the most common questions, can I see this if I'm at the stadium? And the answer is yes. If you look on the jumbotron, you can see it, if you look at the screens. But it is really, it is an augmented reality called mixed reality because it's interacting with the environment.

But this effect is, it's definitely new. And it takes a lot of, takes a lot of time and a lot of people on the ground to coordinate this. And because it's a live shot, you know, the camera operators are part of this story. They have to follow this object in the environment, which, in this case, is the panther. There's a lot of elements to it, including a lot of show elements in the live broadcast.

- Yeah, it certainly sounds like it. Jon, you mentioned that you're hearing from people all over the world. Are other teams within the league interested? Or is this something that you could potentially bring to other leagues, maybe even the MLB or the MLS, the NBA, just in terms of where we could see this going in the future.

JON SLUSSER: Yeah, we have seen unbelievable interest. And it's so fun to be in the middle of this kind of storm. But, yes, we are currently working with the Texans on doing a lot of different mixed reality things for them, just did a-- just last weekend did a really cool sponsored race that is in NRG Stadium. It looks really cool. So this has, you know, this has the capability of more than just doing entertainment elements. Like this panther is a lot of fun and people love it. But this also can be used for business.

It is sponsorship and promotion. You know, you can have a blimp that's not really in the scene. You can have virtual signage. We can take parts of the arena that are not utilized and turn that into product placement or cover it up if it's ugly or cover up maybe seats that aren't sold and looks kind of ugly in the shot.

So what you're seeing here-- and I think this is what's so cool and the reason this is going to be the future of graphics and animation within live events-- is that we can manipulate the environment to the point where you don't know what's real and what's not. These are video game elements rendered live in a live scene. And what we can do with that, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The technology is way ahead of the creative, meaning that just have a panther running around the stadium, when you really start thinking about the creative possibilities for both entertainment, sponsorship, promotion, information and data that can be put into the scene, it's very, very powerful technology. And I think it's going to be the-- it'll be the standard moving forward in broadcast.

- Jon, talking about being in the early innings of this, [INAUDIBLE] your conversations with various CEOs, various executives when you're looking to do business with them, what has the reception been like? Can people visualize this yet? Or is this something that people are still trying to wrap their heads around?

JON SLUSSER: People have a hard time understanding what they're looking at. And because if you're there live, you get it. If you're watching a live broadcast, you get it. But to see it like in these clips afterwards, you're thinking, well, hey, I've seen 3D animation before, what's so big? Because if you can do this in post, who cares? But the fact of the matter is, this is a live shot. This is for live events. And everything can be reactive.

In other words, it does take a second to figure out what's going on and why this is special if you're seeing it on YouTube or something like that. So, yeah, people need to be, it needs to be explained to people. But moments like this with the panther have really opened up people's eyes to what is possible with mixed reality.

- Certainly something that looks very cool, was something that we are excited about. Jon Slusser, thanks so much for taking the time to join us, owner of the Famous Group, we wish you all the best. And we look forward to seeing more of those cool types of videos over the next several weeks.