FromMTVtotheWorldCup:themakingofalivebroadcastdirector

Tim van Someren, who just directed the opening and closing ceremonies of the FIFA World Cup 2026, is one of them, working alongside fellow British director Hamish Hamilton, who directed the tournament's first-ever Halftime Show off the back of a career that already includes the Oscars, the Grammys, the Emmys and multiple Super Bowl Halftime Shows.

They're far from alone; the multicamera directing landscape in the US is dominated by Brits, with America's Got Talent, Dancing with the Stars, American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance, plus the Grammys, the Emmys, the Oscars, the AMAs, the VMAs and the CMAs, all currently or recently directed by British live-broadcast directors. Their craft traces back to a very particular training ground in the chaotic, high-volume world of British live television, where the discipline of shows like SMTV Live, The Big Breakfast, and Saturday night entertainment television have shaped the culture for decades.

Here, Tim talks to Directors UK about how that grounding — from MTV in the 90s to Saturday night entertainment television — prepared him for the biggest live broadcasts in the world.

Learning the toolkit at MTV

Tim’s route into directing started almost by accident on a work experience placement at MTV in 1990/91 while he was on a media studies foundation course, taken only because he couldn't get into his first choice of graphic design work experience. 

“I managed to get some work experience at MTV. I literally was there as a junior work experience intern for a summer, and I worked on a daily live show called Most Wanted. There was only Alan, the producer, and me as the sort of PA, production assistant, in the traditional sense.”

At the end of the summer, rather than returning to his studies, MTV offered him a job, but not on the show floor. He spent the next stretch in the operations department, doing unglamorous technical work that turned out to be foundational: 

“What operations did was sort of production management. It booked all of the studios and all the camera crews and all the location filming cameras, and it did all of the editing and reformatting of shows... Through all that work, I really learned about the technical side — all about crews, editing and production management. Which is a really useful skill.”

From there he worked his way back into the studio floor, directing gradually more complex live shows, and had left MTV by 1998, directing major live music broadcasts.

Why the skill developed in Britain

Tim’s theory as to why so many British directors are at the top of the live broadcast field is rooted in the physical complexity of British studio shows. “In America, they always had programmes like the Tonight Show... those late night shows are physically simple. Man at desk, band in corner. When the band's on, you do the guitar, you do the drums, you do the singer, and you do the wide shot — we'll just cut around them. And then at the desk, we'll have these shots and everything in between is fine. You didn't need to have that same level of complexity.”

British Saturday and weekday shows, by contrast, demanded a level of choreography that had to be planned down to the beat — camera two finishing a band's performance in time to reach the presenter for a scripted link, with the floor manager clearing a path through the audience to make it physically possible. He points to SMTV Live and CD:UK — a single studio built around four stages, switching formats live after every ad break — as a concrete example of that complexity:

“SMTV has four stages in the studio. Chums is on a stage, there's the interview area, there’s two performance stages, and then the interview stage turns into performance stages for CD:UK after a commercial break... you had to make sure the handheld was clear of Chums (a skit based on the sitcom Friends) to get over to Wonky Donkey (a funny phone-in segment) in advance, so you could cut straight from the Spice Girls to that. I think the system we developed for how to direct and script and plan and rehearse those programmes made them possible.”

Problem-solving live at the World Cup final

Even heavily planned shows can unravel fast. At the World Cup final, van Someren had a specific camera — camera 71 — pre-assigned to cut to President Trump in the VIP box during the anthem. “We'd cut to President Trump in the VIP box, where he'd probably do a salute. There was a specific camera, 71, to do the VIP box.”

But on the day, an unplanned obstacle made that shot impossible. “Since rehearsals, they'd put up a big glass screen in front of the box, and it was so reflective the camera couldn't see through it. So what other cameras can see into that box? Which aren't very many, because the cameras are all faced the other way, looking at the match.”

With no time to consult anyone, he improvised in real time, reassigning shots across the anthem sequence to free up an angle on the VIP box, while a comms failure meant the pitch-side producer didn't realise the shot had already been delivered and kept demanding it live:

“I’m getting the producer on the pitch radioing through, going, 'Where's Trump? We haven't seen Trump.' And I'm like, we have seen him — but it's evident he can't hear me. In a situation like this I don't have to ask anybody, I don't need to consult with anybody. I just do it, because that's the goal. And the thing about directing is ultimately what goes on the screen is my responsibility.”

Becoming a specialist by accident: NT Live and Frankenstein

For most of his career, Tim was a generalist, moving between music, entertainment, and stunt shows depending on who was available. His entry into theatre broadcasting came about for the opposite reason a theatre specialist might expect.

“When I did the first National Theatre Live — which I sort of got because I wasn't a theatre person — for the Danny Boyle Frankenstein, they particularly wanted a non-theatre person. That really was why I got it, because I had quite a broad experience.”

That one job changed the trajectory of his career. Ten NT Live broadcasts later, what started as an outsider's perspective had turned him into exactly the kind of specialist he'd originally been hired to avoid being. “But then I did ten of those in a row, and I became a theatre expert somehow. And then I got loads and loads of theatre work because I was a specialist.”

When you can't get the shot, change the concept

For the Ozzy Osbourne farewell Black Sabbath concert — an unscripted, eight-hour bill of around twenty bands — Tim had planned a big, stadium-scale rock show. Days out, the equipment planned for it fell apart. “We couldn't get a spider cam, we couldn't get a wire cam. We had a drone which the police then ordered down, even though we had a licence, they changed their mind on the day of the show.”

Rather than deliver a compromised version of the original plan, he changed the visual concept entirely, leaning into an intimate, handheld style instead. “I just said, why don't we do it more like — you watch the Isle of Wight from 1972, no one goes, 'oh, where's the spider cam?' They just go, great music. Let's just get six handheld cameras working in the crowd, three on the stage.”

“In the end you just have to adapt. My boring but really useful saying is: once you've ruled out the impossible, whatever's left is your answer, however improbable it may seem.”

Why specialists get the biggest jobs

For most of his career, van Someren was a broad generalist, called in as the backup option across genres rather than the first choice in any one of them. “For each genre, I was the third person they called. Live music show — well, we'll call this person, we'll call that person, if they can't do it, we'll get Tim.”

That changed once he became known for one thing at a time — first theatre, now sports ceremony work. His advice to directors is blunt: specialising, even if it feels limiting, is what actually gets you the biggest jobs, because it's what makes employers confident enough to hire you.

“If you're the world's best sports ceremonies director... you get the World Cup final, the Olympic opening ceremony. You get the big jobs. Whereas if you're just the fourth person doing that, you'll get the smaller stuff. Speciality really helps.”

He's equally direct about the trade-off: you can't present yourself as a generalist and expect to be trusted with specialist work — the two read as mutually exclusive to the people hiring.

“The worst thing you can put on your LinkedIn page is ‘producer, director, vision mixer, floor manager, editor.’ You're probably brilliant at all of those things, but the perception is, ‘I want someone who just does music performances. They're going to know everything about it, be really immersed in it.’”

His conclusion is that directors who want to move into a new genre have to commit to it outright rather than wait to be noticed. “If you want to be a different genre director, just tell everybody you're a different genre director. Advertise yourself as one. Go and do that genre, even if it's for free... I feel like you've got to be who you want to be, and then just sell yourself as that.”