<\/a>The control room at Allegiant Stadium is HDR-capable.<\/p><\/div>\n
This is an HDR building, and CBS is also doing HDR. How does that change things?
\n<\/strong>A lot of the buildings now are going with an HDR workflow, and our guys had to come in early in December to work with the staff here to dial in these boards to match the true colors. A lot of effort went into that, and kudos to our VP, Creative, Ryan Kehn<\/strong> and our guys for working with the Allegiant staff to dial these boards in for an HDR workflow because CBS is all-HDR and we share resources. That makes it seamless integration, and you\u2019re going to see high-quality video on these boards and without a lot of conversion on our end because we\u2019re all living in the same world.<\/p>\nHow many CBS cameras do you have access to?
\n<\/strong>We can take as many as we want, but we’ll take 17 live into the switcher and two or three times that live into the router because we have multiple EVS stations that do packages and replays. That team is taking in all the feeds from CBS and putting together these great packages.<\/p>\nHow has the whole game presentation for this game evolved over the past 15 years? There was a time when it was a much more conservative show.
\n<\/strong>We often laugh because pictures from 15 years ago pop up on your Facebook feed and our Super Bowl crew was five people. This year, we\u2019ve traveled 100 for the game-presentation show, and there are more than 90 of the local crew.<\/p>\nWe have a small army for game presentation, and you ask yourself why is that? It’s because the expectations today are to give the people here in the stadium an unbelievable experience, and we stretch it to the limit from the great music to the videos to having the ribbon boards complement a video with lights flashing.<\/p>\n
Can you talk about integrating with the Ross Video team who is also here with you?
\n<\/strong>They\u2019re part of our travel team. We consider Ross family and bring them everywhere. I mean, every event we do. Guys on that team \u2014 like Andrew Lahey<\/strong>, manager, solution specialist \u2014<\/strong>\u00a0have the technical ability to take these boards and do what we want. Leahy, Solution Specialist<\/strong> Stefan Tribble<\/strong>.<\/strong> and Greg Kuh<\/strong> manager, content and workflow,<\/strong> are great because we present them with a challenge and they just do it. I want the board to do this. Okay, no problem. Give me 20 minutes. Boom, boom, boom, boom. And there it is, right?<\/p>\nThat\u2019s the difference you see between the local home show and the show we have. We have different needs. We have to make sure everything we do matches and is non-biased and all that good stuff to provide that level of equality for both teams. Ross helps us do that. I mean, simple things like needing a lower-third bar that shows time remaining. Boom, they make it. It’s amazing.<\/p>\n
I know from speaking with others about HDR that there are still issues around graphics. Are your graphics done in SDR and then mapped to HDR?
\nLahey:<\/strong> Everything for the boards is being done in SDR, and we’re doing the conversion for HDR. The graphics file formats are limited on the HDR side, and there are things like sponsors and getting proper logos and HDR content. Editing is also done in SDR. When we came in December, we did a lot of color tests to dial in the HDR.<\/p>\nLast year, you opened a remote-production facility in Raleigh, NC. How has that team been involved?
\n<\/strong>We just did the Pro Bowl from Raleigh, and I think it is the first remote game presentation. It was a high-level success, and we had positive feedback from the NFL.<\/p>\nWho was onsite?
\n<\/strong>We had a producer, associate producer, and a couple editors. Of course, you\u2019ll always have your camera operators there \u2014 we had four \u2014 and all that normal game-presentation stuff. But the TD, the Ross Xpression and operator, the audio mixer were all in Raleigh. It was probably 10 onsite and 10 back home.<\/p>\nWhat are the challenges in a remote game-presentation show?
\n<\/strong>The latency is always the biggest challenge: if the guy scores a touchdown, the videoboard needs to show the guy scoring a touchdown immediately, not a half a second or a second later. For the Pro Bowl, our engineers decided to put the switcher guts onsite and just remote into the switcher via IP. We would punch up the switcher in Raleigh, but the guts were in Orlando. That way, all the latency went away. We also had an LMG production truck onsite.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/strong>Do you see more opportunities around remote production?
\n<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>Yes. We just signed a deal with Athletes Unlimited to get us into the broadcast world with their \u00a0basketball and lacrosse. And we just got a new development guy, Will Wright<\/strong>, who\u2019s going to push us to get into that space.<\/p>\nWe are also far along in discussions with a couple of exciting clients holding events this spring and summer that will be nationally televised. So things are really looking up on that side, on top of the game-presentation side. I\u2019m very excited.<\/p>\n
Looking to Sunday, what’s it like right before kickoff?
\n<\/strong>First, it\u2019s always a pleasure to be here and do this thing and work with the NFL and be a part of it. I still get choked up on kickoff after all these years. It\u2019s hard to make that first call because you work so damn hard to get to that point. We\u2019ve been getting home at 11 p.m., back in at 7 a.m.; there’s a lot of pressure in this business. Then, finally, on Super Bowl Sunday, you\u2019re like, \u2018Wow, finally here.\u2019 Then you do it, go home, and move on to the next one.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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