What goes into the production design for the Super Bowl Halftime Show? Live Design chats with Bruce Rodgers of Tribe Inc. who pulled off some true tribal magic at Super Bowl LX – with a benchmark show starring Bad Bunny and set in the singer's home town in Puerto Rico as he celebrated his roots and Latin culture. Faced with a limited number of carts on the field, Rodgers came up with some pretty clever solutions.
Related: Check out all of Live Design's coverage of the Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show.
Live Design: When did you start working on the 2026 show and did you know Bad Bunny was the star at that point?
Bruce Rodgers: My first day was a site survey of the stadium in early September. Most of our production team had already surveyed once and I joined the second visit with art director Shelley Rodgers. At this point in time we were a few weeks away from meeting the halftime show artist.
Our survey team includes representatives from RocNation, DPS, and all the internal department heads from design, staging, lighting, FX, audio, camera, casting, production and security and we start the production and design process by walking the Super Bowl stadium, this time at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara Ca.
Exec producer Dave Meyers and his DPS team drive these surveys and lead the way for the next 11 weeks.
This survey's goals are to meet with NFL field operations, meet with event architects Populous, review the site around and inside the stadium, check rehearsal locations, gathering dimensions from the Halftime compound to the stadium field, and field verify measurements of the 'show tunnel'. This was the survey where we reviewed this year's NFL Field Ops Field Limitation Document which lays out the general scale of the Halftime show. Because the grass field at this particular stadium is unusually sensitive we got marching orders to stay within a certain amount of carts cameras and field cast, and rehearsals would be limited unlike previous years.
LD: What made this show different from prior Super Bowl Halftime Shows?
BR: This was my 20th consecutive Super Bowl Halftime show and it brought a lot of personal pressure. Each of the previous years had resulted in a successful production, cool designs, powerful performances and high ratings. The bar kept raising thanks to everyone involved. I didn't want anything to go sideways on this special year and when I found out the artist was Bad Bunny I knew this would be a groundbreaking show.
LD: Can you talk about the collaboration with Bad Bunny and his creative team - what were they looking for and how did you approach the design?
BR: I've been blessed to have a really special job on the Super Bowl halftime show team. My job is to provide guidance across the production toward a successful show. In every case the artist team is fully loaded and ready to do something big and meaningful, and every year our team is ready for the greatest challenge in live show business. The combination of the artist's vision and the HT show's ability to pull it off is one of the greatest design and production stories on the planet year after year. This year with Bad Bunny and his creatives led by Harriet Cuddeford, Julio Himede, Nicola Filler Assoulin. Roly Garbalosa and many more, combined with our multi halftime show veterans, led by our leaders at ROC NATION, created a show design recipe that was equally challenging and heartfelt with the main goal being a message of global love. How it was achieved was a story for the ages.
Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio wanted the look of his show to be as authentically Puerto Rican as possible, having finished his massively successful month long 'residency in San Juan where he first presented his iconic Casita and sugar cane field look and feel. He was the author of the halftime story as he is for all his presentations. Benito had a story to tell with every detail. His creative team for the Halftime show evolved three times in the beginning with Parris Goebel, Silent House, and Stufish exploring his ideas. He landed with creative director Harriet and her support team at Yellow Studios to continue on thru the rest of the process. Yellow's Nicola Filler Assouli did a masterful job of balancing the directives from the Bad Bunny side with our practical needs of the Halftime show side. Yellow's Julio Himede, my co-production designer worked well with Harriet to identify the look and feel of all the various props and set pieces and their designers Connor Munion, Damun Jawanrudi, Oli Colman helped develop beautifully detailed designs for all the elements. Art director Leticia Leon joined the process in mid-December to be the local Los Angeles person overseeing Lennon and Company and Show FX who did an amazing job of building all the scenic plants. Jetsets, Global Scenic, Atomic Scenery and Trio Entertainment services were involved to design and build props, scenic finishes and all the scenic detail that Benito desired. My design and art direction team acts as the filter for all things design, and I want to say thanks to Shelley and Lily Rodgers, art directors, and Brian Ireland, master plan CAD designer, as well as Regan Eastland and Andrew Frey, associate art directors.
Because of Bad Bunny's touring schedule that basically began when the Halftime show process started we didn't have real interaction for the first few weeks. This created a condensed design and build period and became a pressure cooker of sorts. All meetings that normally happened in November were happening in December, etc.
Ultimately the whole Bad Bunny creative team ran with us to the finish line collaborating with my team and the rest of the production to make the show a success!
LD: How did you come up with the idea for the grass people — genius idea! How many carts were on the field and what elements were on the carts?
BR: In late November I gave the Benito team the concept to make the majority of the grass carts into wearable human costumes. No one on the Bad Bunny side wanted the grass costumes but I knew it was the only way to give Benito the scale that he wanted. With all the push and pull of the design process we found ourselves at 65 carts on December 7. The NFL field ops team wanted no more than 25 carts...so it was clear that we had to go the route of costumes to save time and show scale. The idea was finally approved on December 8 and Over the next few weeks our costume director Monique Peters and her team took the concept and built 450 costumes that turned out to be a fun part of the behind the scenes topics of the show.
Ultimately the show design had 22 set carts, 380 grass costumes, and 18 special grass and sugar cane dollies.
LD: How did the design process and All Access involvement work?
BR: The foundation of any successful Super Bowl Halftime show is the number of carts and the way the carts are engineered. Once again our friends at All Access were on board to build the show and they did a stellar job despite the tightened time frame and bumpy design process along he way. Their scope bounced from the unrealistic 80 cart ideas all the way to the 22-cart show we ended with. Our staging team combined with the clever engineering from All Access worked hard to deliver the design that would install within our 8 minute window. We installed in six minutes 30 seconds on show day. and six minutes flat on the out...a true testament of team work across the board.
LD: What was the most challenging thing this year?
BR: Every aspect of this show is more and more challenging to pull off every year. Executive producers Jay Z and Desiree Perez at Roc Nation expect the best show in the world. Similarly the NFL wants a global spectacle that raises the bar and speaks to a wider global audience....and our world class production team, led by co-executive producers Jesse Collins and Dave Meyers, fully embraces making something that seems impossible possible. Our team is made up of so many incredible people like director Hamish Hamilton, LD Al Gurdon, field cast director KP Terry and stage manager Gary Natoli. The challenge becomes creating something epic and meaningful in the midst of major limitations and time crunches with the goals of satisfying not only the viewers In the stadium and at home on television but also our own team...and Bad Bunny too. I'm pretty sure we did that.
