Ball State Sports Link Unveils Plans For Digital Sports Production Center

A new 1,500 square-foot dedicated Digital Sports Production Center has been announced for students in Ball State Sports Link (Muncie, IN) and the new digital sports production sequence, which begins in August.

A rendering of Ball State Sports Link’s new digital sports production facility.

The new facility was officially announced June 27 at the University Foundation Board of Directors dinner which was held in the David Letterman Communication and Media Building.

The new SL/DSP center will be located on the second floor of the Letterman and Ball Communications buildings and will include a glass-enclosed classroom and immersive learning production space with multiple editing stations, two director’s offices, a post-production room and a digital social media and sports monitoring wall with two 60-inch plasmas and three 32” monitors.

The digital sports production center was made possible through the generous support of Turner Sports, the Ball Brothers Foundation, the College of Communication, Information, and Media, Ball State Athletics and individual donors.

For those who are interested, additional tax-deductible financial support of both the new SL/DSP facility and the overall student program can be made through Ball State’s University Foundation, contributing to the Sports Link #7418 account.

Using the immersive learning model of Ball State Sports Link, the new Digital Sports Production sequence will specialize in multiple areas. The program’s students produce a broad range of content from live remote productions, live- to-tape events, television programs, student-athlete features and webcasts. Other facets of the program will include radio, social media, podcasts and the use of mobile technology and interactivity via the web.

Students in Digital Sports Production will gain industry-accepted experience in the following areas:

• Live game, cross-platform productions with the use of Ball State’s 40-foot HD production truck
• Studio show and feature story production and storytelling on multiple platforms
• Post-production and editing
• Engineering and broadcast operations
• Archiving and logging footage
• Operation of field and live production cameras, mobile production units
• Operation of replay and broadcast graphic systems
• Non-linear editing with Final Cut Pro or the equivalent
• Building and design of graphics and animations in Adobe Creative Suite
• Cross-platform delivery methods, formats, compression and encoding
• Producing sports content for cross-platforms including broadcast, online, mobile and tablet applications

TCOM is a member of one of the largest undergraduate communication colleges in the country — the College of Communication, Information and Media.

The Sports Link offices and studios are located in the Ball Communications Building, while the David Letterman Communication and Media Building is a world-class facility offering state-of-the-art options for all students.