Behind the Lens: 12th Man Productions Captures the Action at Texas A&M

Jonathan Kerr, Chief Broadcast Engineer for 12th Man Productions within the Texas A&M Athletics Department, graduated from Texas A&M back in the Spring of 2020 and has lived and worked there ever since. His main responsibilities include overseeing all technical operations for 12th Man Productions, including capital projects, broadcasts, and in-venue videoboards.

12th Man covers all NCAA varsity sports for Texas A&M; everything from football to equestrian. The group handles all in-venue video board production, as well as all broadcasts for ESPN. On top of the live production/broadcast element, they also do the post-production content work for all of the University’s teams. 12th Man covers everything from social media to linear TV for Texas A&M Athletics. 

Kerr sat down for a Q&A to discuss his day-to-day responsibilities, how Texas A&M’s production facilities have continued to evolve, how his team relies on Cartoni technology, and a few war stories from his time at 12th Man Productions.

How big is the 12th Man Productions crew and who works on your team?

All told, we have a team of 16 full-time staffers, including 10 producer/editors, three broadcast producer/directors, and three engineers. We also have a student workforce of over 100 Texas A&M students. Rather than using freelancers for everything, we knew we had a massive talent pool right on campus that we could tap into.

It’s a great learning experience for our students to get on top of all their college classes. We have students leave here with four years of experience in 12th Man on the field at Texas A&M video/content production and engineering that they wouldn’t be able to get anywhere else.

Can you provide an overview of your production facilities at Texas A&M?

Texas A&M has a $14 million dollar facility located in the south endzone of Kyle Field that was built along with the stadium renovation back in 2014. We were lucky to have such a state-of-the-art facility at the time, and be able to re-invest millions of dollars every year to keep it current. 12th Man Productions went from a fully baseband 720p facility with 16 cameras and four box lenses (when I started), to today’s setup of a fully SMPTE 2110, 1080p facility with 30 cameras, six of those being super slo-mo cameras, and 10 box lenses; in addition to numerous upgrades in post-production equipment. We’re extremely thankful that athletics department leadership really understands the importance of multi-media content in this day and age to continue to support our staff and our facility.

Our camera packages include Grass Valley 100 series cameras, Canon 66x and 80x lenses and a Fuji 107xAF lens. For support have Cartoni Magnum heads with Sport 200 tripods. In 2023, we received funding for five new box lens builds. That’s when we purchased the four 66x Canon lenses, and the Fuji 107xAF, together with our five Cartoni Magnum tripod systems for support.

How did you first become aware of Cartoni and get to know their products?

After attending NAB 2023 and reviewing all our camera-support options, 12th Man eventually found our way to the Cartoni booth. I was genuinely blown away by what they had to offer. Cartoni’s manufacturing felt extremely well-built, but also not overly complicated.

As I mentioned before, all of our camera operators are students, and I have received nothing but good feedback from them on our new Cartoni supports. When deciding what to go with, I just felt that Cartoni was a cut above the rest. Since we cover so many sports broadcasts, one of our biggest considerations was that all of our camera builds are constantly moving around. We knew we needed something that could “take a beating” if you will from having to make thousands of trips around campus. When looking at Cartoni and how they were built, I felt they were more than up to the task.

How have these Cartoni products performed for your team?

From an operation standpoint, our whole crew loves them. It’s extremely simple to set up and operates smooth as butter. The LED counter balance indicator is such a subtle feature, but so nice to have. Our regular operators know exactly how they need to set everything up each time to be perfectly balanced. As I mentioned before, I knew our supports would take a beating, and over the last few years, they definitely have. These Cartoni tripods and heads have held up. I couldn’t ask for more.

What was one of your most memorable productions during your time at 12th Man Productions?

In this job, you’ve got to be ready for anything. I can remember one Sunday basketball game when a record winter storm went through Texas. Texas is not built for sustained periods of sub-zero temperatures because it just doesn’t happen. Another thing that was not built for this kind of weather was Kyle Field. Temperatures had been sub-zero for a couple days when I made my way into the control rooms (slowly on the icy roads, no salt trucks here) to do the game.

I walked in and thought it felt a little warm so I go back to our rack room and get blasted with scorching hot air. The chilled water line pipes to our Computer Room Air Conditioning (CRAC) units had burst due to the cold and were now pumping out a steady 130-degrees. I quickly ran through and started shutting down equipment and had my student engineers open up all the doors. We put fans at external facility doors blowing IN to get that freezing air back to the rack room. This was all happening in the middle of crew call for a nationally televised game on ESPN.

On top of everything, the fire alarms continuously blared throughout our control rooms due to all the burst pipes. The basketball game was scheduled to take place in our arena over on the west side of campus. The game would go ahead, no problem, but we had our hands full back at the football stadium control room getting everything on air. About an hour before tip off we start getting the rack room cooled down enough to get the critical equipment back online, only to have all of the lights suddenly go out in the control room. We’d just lost house power and were now running on the Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS). I’m on the phone with ESPN explaining to them that we won’t be able to broadcast if we can’t get house power back before our UPS batteries die.

Thankfully, the facilities group got the power back on just before the game started and we were able to somehow broadcast the entire game, even with the fire alarms flashing, beeping and loudly repeating the system emergency message on an endless loop. To this day I can still recite it for you word-for-word. Good times, but we did it. 

Are you looking to upgrade your facilities at Texas A&M in the near future and, if so, how? 

Texas A&M is always improving. For the facility, we’re looking to add a few more box lenses and down the road we look forward to fully outfitting our broadcast equipment with Cartoni supports. Summer 2026 we will be replacing and upgrading our control room intercom. The biggest next step for me will be when our facility makes the move to high dynamic range (HDR). A huge goal of mine is to be fully 1080p HDR within the next two years.

What’s one piece of advice you can offer to students coming up in this industry? 

My advice for students interested in this kind of work, or really anyone that wants to work in broadcast sports is: work and learn. One of the biggest things we do with our students is to encourage them to work and learn at every position.

This gives them a great opportunity to not only find out what they truly love to do, but also to have their hands on every piece of equipment in the control room/post-production environment.

There are so many different things you can do in this profession, and you won’t know unless you put yourself out there. No job is too small! Apply yourself and keep learning.