Live From Super Bowl LVII: NEP Group Specialty Cameras, Trucks Ready for World Feed and More
NEP Group is on site in force for Super Bowl LVII, with a big presence at the international compound supporting the world feed as well as the needs of international rights holders, NFL Films, Fox Sports, and more. In addition, NEP Group will provide plenty of specialty cameras and other services for everyone from Fox Sports to NFL Films to ESPN and more.
“The team is really excited to be here,” says Glen Levine, NEP Broadcast Services, president. “We have a lot of things going on and these are historic shows that we’ve been doing with these clients for many years. We’re proud to be part of it.
NEP’s Glen Levine (left) and Dan Grainge and the NEP team are ready for Super Bowl LVII and have been busy supporting clients all week.
Dan Grainge, NEP Group, president of the Specialty Capture Division, says that the expansion of specialty cameras usage is going beyond the sidelines and endlines of the field.
“We’re adding things like nine hallway cameras as we’re finding that the field is covered so off the field is where things are being added,” says Grainge. “It’s for that off-the-field story that might happen, and we’ve seen that a couple of times where the bigger story is off the field. So we have side areas where we never would’ve thought to add a camera suddenly having 1080p, HDR robos.”
Graine says the NEP Speciality Capture Division is also working with Sony and other camera makers to get unique angles.
“A good example are our goalpost cameras that are tied to AR as well as all the sideline cameras in 4K,” he adds. “It’s not something new but it’s just more. If before we did two cameras now its four. If it used to be four now its eight. That is where we’re seeing the growth.”
As someone who has been at the forefront of specialty camera design for decades, Grainge recalls a moment years ago when the label maker for a new POV was 101 instead of 10.
“I said ‘you know, keep that’ and now we are in the hundreds and I didn’t necessarily envision that but it’s not surprising that we continue to grow worldwide. The applications just continue to come.”
Bob Walsh, NEP Group, VP, engineering and operations, and his team are playing a big part in the world feed efforts.
“What started out 20 years ago distribution wise in a little “bread truck” for the NFL has morphed into this,” says. “We used to only have Tac12 fiber cables and now we have Tac72 cables and some Tac24 cables. It just keeps growing and growing.”
One of the most important NEP production units will be Supershooter 9 and ST9 which will handle the world feed production. The Super Bowl is one of those U.S. sports events that resonates around the world and those rights holders can receive a feed that is produced separately from the Fox Sports effort.
“The world feed puts up around eight cameras and they have their own EVS operators and commentators,” says Walsh. “It’s a paired down version of what the host is doing.”
The world feed show is available to rights holders along with over 50+ feeds from the Fox domestic broadcast to purchase and add to their show. Those feeds are handled in NEP’s Super B and new this year is the way those signals will get from the domestic compound to NEP’s Super B which serves as a hub for signal distribution to rights holders. Fox Sports has built an IP based transmission system that uses EVS Neuron servers, and one is located in the international compound.
“Typically, we’re putting a fiber package of devices together, usually Multidyne VF9000s, and we send it to the domestic rights holder to give us all the feeds,” says Walsh. “This year they just dropped off an EVS Neuron server here and we can pick what we want. The system even provides us the signals in 1080i, which is what is used in the international compound, so we did not need to cross convert the 1080p signals the host broadcaster was using.
Fox came up with a neat little system and for larger events like this or the World Cup it makes sense.”
International rights holders have a wide range of production services on site. Some may simply pass on the world feed home with the world feed announcers while others might have a small trailer and cut it on something like a Ross Carbonite. TUDN has their own truck with NEP’s M15 in a support role.
“The only networking, we are doing is with Disney who has their own xFile and are plugged into the World Feed truck 10 Gbps EVS network so they can pull clips all night,” adds Walsh.
Every year the NEP team expands its efforts and learns how to do things more efficiently. One of the more memorable moments was at Super Bowl 50 in San Francisco at Levi Stadium.
“We had sub-rented the fiber and it didn’t work well, so we ended up building our own fiber and learned it’s better to build our own and we’ve never had an issue since then,” he says. “We also worked with Cobalt and designed an “Ident DA” to help identify the feed paths for the various broadcasters. It really helped giving broadcasters the assurance that they were seeing the correct feed, even if it was not active until a day or 2 before the game.
As for other NEP units, EN2 A and B will be front and center for ESPN’s State Farm Park coverage on Game Day. NEP is also supporting TUDN and Concom in M15, international media services in NCP10, and Van Wagner’s operations for the NFL Tailgate via Atlantic.
NEP Group companies Fletcher, AVS, and Bexel are also in Phoenix supporting a variety of clients. Fletcher, for example, is providing Sony HDC-4800 hard cameras for game use along the sidelines and Sony 4800 robos for the goal lines and end zone lines. It will also provide robotics for the goal posts and Sony P50 robotics for the announce booth, nine robos for the hallways, and two robos for beauty shots.
AVS will provide a number of RF systems, including three for Van Wagner’s in-venue show, four for Roc Nation’s Super Bowl halftime show, three to JTRP for NFL honors, two to NFL Network for NFL Honors red carpet show, and one each to Concom (for Twitch Bowl), BitFire Networks for the game, and International Media Services at State Farm Stadium.
The name of the game has also been resource sharing among all of the NEP Group staffers. And not only those involved with the Superb Bowl but also the Phoenix Open PGA Tour event in Scottsdale.
“We have the Phoenix Open, NFL Honors [which is being done be NEP Denali] so we’re spread out but we have people going from show to show to support each other,” Grainge adds. “We also have engineers running cable for Fletcher, AVS, or BSI which is something as smaller companies we would never have been able to do. But because we’re within the NEP family it can be done and it helps to have all the workflows working together.”
And Bexel will once again play a big part with support gear for NFL Network (fiber hardware, monitors, and prompters); fiber support for Van Wagner; Viz graphics, fiber, monitors, and prompters for ESPN at both the Scottsdale studio and the stadium; and CBS Sports Network (monitors and prompters) on Radio Row.
“All the shows are getting larger,” says Levine. “Just look at the distribution that’s here and the amount of cameras and the amount of specialty cameras that are here. It’s grown significantly in the last five years and there’s more, but with the new technology you can do it lot cleaner.”