BSI Provides Wireless Camera Link for Final Four Coverage
Story Highlights
For the 2011 Final Four, CBS Sports added several production enhancements, including a wireless handheld camera provided by Broadcast Sports, Inc. (BSI). After successful implementation during the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 games, BSI’s HD Wireless Camera Link made its way to Houston to provide crowd shots and team footage at the Final Four.
For Saturday’s semifinal games and Monday’s championship game, BSI provided an RF camera, camera control, and a wireless PL for the cameraman. Thankfully, with a stadium that is fully fibered to BSI’s control area, there were few challenges involved in the implementation.
“I picked a location that wasn’t being utilized by the camera crew,” explains Lou Meyers, core plus supervisor for BSI. “Because this is a football stadium, there are camera positions at the left 20 yard-line and the right 20. The left 20 wasn’t being used, and that gave me a high enough perspective for my antennas to get coverage of the whole bowl.”
CBS also wanted to utilize the wireless handheld for coverage of the hallways, as teams made their way from the locker room into the venue.
“We found a good spot to put the antennas for that and utilized house fiber to get it back, so that wasn’t bad at all,” Meyers explains.
BSI has worked with CBS Sports many times in the past, providing wireless cameras for golf tournaments and NFL games, including AFC playoffs and championships, so big games are nothing new to BSI. Basketball, however, is.
“This is the first basketball game in my 15 years with BSI,” Meyers says. “It’s all new to me because I didn’t know what kind of coverage they wanted and what they were going to use the camera for. We’ve figured out how to use the camera to get the shots they want.”
With the mobility of the wireless handheld, those shots include capturing the teams as they walk from the locker rooms into the stadium, close-ups during team introductions, crowd shots and reactions, and following the team as it exits the venue to head back to the locker room.
