Reality Check Studios tackles NFL Network’s regular season with VIZ|engine and viz|trio

NFL Network kicked off a second season with Vizrt’s powerful
graphics rendering engine at the core of its insert graphics solution. NFL
Network has eight Viz|Engines installed at their studio in
Culver City, CA
where several programs, including the network’s flagship show “NFL Total
Access,” are produced. NFL Network also covers the NFL Draft and produces a
variety of shows that highlight NFL action on the gridiron and off.

Two Viz|Engine renderers and one Viz|Trio CG were deployed
for production of “Thursday Night Football” and “Saturday Night Football”
during which eight NFL regular season games were shown on NFL Network beginning
on Thanksgiving and running through the historic December 29th match up between
the Patriots and Giants.

“When NFL Network chose Vizrt, they went with the same
platform used by other major networks for their NFL packages,” said Jeff
Heimbold, Senior Producer at Reality Check Studios, a Los Angeles-based motion
graphics company who collaborate with NFL Network on creation of their Vizrt
graphics. “We’ve created graphics packages for football, baseball, basketball,
soccer and many other sports and in our experience, Vizrt is the gold standard
for live broadcast graphics.”

For the 2007 season, NFL Network Creative Director Carlos
Aguero designed the look for the NFL games graphics and worked with Reality
Check Studios to create the graphics and animations in Viz|Artist. “Thursday
Night Football” and “Saturday Night Football” programs are graphics-intensive,
including lower-third graphics, player statistics, clock and score, passing and
rushing yardage and full-screen stats. “Successful sports production means
treating graphics and the associated data as critical parts of the program,”
said Heimbold. “NFL Network knows that their fans are keenly interested in
knowing the latest player statistic or information on a specific play. It’s
much more than window dressing. It’s a way to bring NFL fans closer to the
sidelines.”
Heimbold described the flexibility of Viz|Engine as a key
factor in its selection. Thanks to Viz|Engine’s open control interface, Reality
Check Studios was able to develop a customized front-end program that runs the
game clock and scoreboard. A sports service feeds data into the program thereby
ensuring that at any point throughout the game, a graphic is displaying the
game time as it elapses as well as the current score. “It‘s essential that
we’re able to write our own graphics control software to compliment Viz|Trio
and meet the specific needs of NFL Network. Viz|Engine gives us the easiest and
most accommodating platform to accomplish that.”