Here at CitrusTV, we’ve learned it’s no easy task putting together a play-by-play sports production. (It’s also no easy task over-undering cables for some of us… CAMERA TWO?)
As if the three cameras used in SUper Sports seem overwhelming, take a look at this article from The Atlantic about veteran football director Bob Fishman and the television magic that takes place every football game. About 20 cameras, 40 replay machines and six clones of Wes go into making an average production possible.
That number of cameras more than doubled for last Sunday’s Super Bowl, including the pre-game and halftime shows, when NBC aired the Super Bowl for the first time since 1998.
While we were watching the epic game, filling up on guacamole, laughing at TV’s most expensive commercials, scratching our heads at 3D’s comeback, waiting for the hour-long episode of The Office, and complaining about why NBC had to broadcast the center frame of the 16:9 HD broadcast instead of just letterboxing the game on our 4:3 screens (or was that just me?) … 14 mobile units, 14 office trailers, nine support trucks, three uplinks, five twin-unit generators, 50 feet of fiber-optic cable, 400 production and engineering personnel and 55 hi-def cameras were at work broadcasting the action from Tampa, according to this “SUper” cool article from Broadcasting & Cable.
I just want to know when the Carrier Dome is getting a Cable Cam. Is it wrong to be in love with a piece of camera equipment?
