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The 2022 Commonwealth Games will be the biggest sports event
on UK shores since London 2012 with around 1.5 billion global audience expected
to watch over the 11 day event beginning July 28. Bidding for the host
broadcast contract began in summer of 2019 with the award announced for Sunset
+ Vine in April 2020. Here’s what S+V plan with a special focus on one of its
OB partners, Gravity Media.
“The bidding process is really the start of planning for the
event,” explains David Tippett, Managing Director, Sunset + Vine. “During
2021 we shifted from planning to delivery. All the plans we had at the outset
are still essentially the same. Our approach is to build-in flexibility and
adaptation.”
S+V has the advantage when it comes to this project of
having seen the uncertainties around the pandemic come and go. Surprisingly
perhaps, given the recent drive to remote live, all production of the host
broadcast will be on site in largely conventional OB.
“Everything is very traditional,” says Mark Dennis, Director
of Technical Operations, S+V. “Sports will be switched in the trucks on site
for the basic world feed which comes back to the IBC for onward distribution.”
There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, planning
began pre-Covid. Secondly the economies of scale that usually work in favor of
remote producing a series of matches for one sport don’t necessarily work with
multiple different events to produce. The Commonwealth Games Federation doesn’t
own a remote production facility and the venues themselves lack the connectivity
required to route dozens of feeds back to a central hub. In addition, the UK is
blessed with OB facility providers and with no need to fly any additional crew
or facilities in, it simply made sense to use the resources at hand.
Timeline are the IBC service provider. Other OBs are
from NEP, Cloudbass, Gravity Media and the EMG group (including
CTV, Telegenic, Eurolink, Broadcast RF and ASC). Hawk-eye is supplying kit for
sports adjudication.
Right Sized Production
More than 370 cameras will be deployed across 19 different
sports and 22 OBs, with the additional trucks needed for events like road
cycling and time trials. Live coverage alone will tally 1500 hours with
additional material including a best of games channel and a highlights package
for clipping taking the total production output to 3300 hours. Some 34 feeds
will be switched at the IBC (some sports like badminton and table tennis have
two games playing simultaneously and require two separate feeds) with 22 the
maximum number of feeds required at peak.
It is a far smaller scale event than an Olympics and
requires the host to cut its cloth accordingly. The phrase used to describe
this is ‘right sized’.
“We were always tasked with coming up with a right sized
host for the Commonwealth Games – something that makes it sustainable and
secures its long-term future,” Tippett says.
That’s about being relevant to generations not bred on the
concept of the Commonwealth and for which an inaugural Esports championships is
being piloted with separate branding, medals and organisation. It also means
addressing the soaring costs of hosting such an event.
The Commonwealth Games Federation claim that the £967m spent
on the Gold Coast 2018 delivered a £1.3bn boost to the Queensland economy while
also saying of Birmingham’s £778m budget that “an important element is the
significant decrease in direct Games delivery costs compared to Gold
Coast." The 2026 event is in Melbourne (the Victoria CWG).
“The honest truth is that we won’t have the bells and
whistles of an Olympics, or the level of specialist cameras or 3D animated
replays,” Tippett says. “It will have really high quality, well directed and
well produced broadcast coverage which will stack up against any world
championship.
“We’re not saying ‘look at these new innovations’. Sometimes
host broadcasts are a numbers game where there’s this demand to increase the
number of cameras or specialist coverage from the previous event.”
The opening ceremony from Birmingham will be produced in UHD
HDR but all other coverage will be in 1080p SDR. Again, this is down to demand.
There was an appetite for UHD HDR for the opening ceremony from the BBC, the
CGF and also the games organising committee.
Broadcast tests have been staged at Alexander Stadium in
Perry Barr and at Sandwell home of the aquatic events. The Alex test was
actually a Diamond League athletics event broadcast on 21 May for which S+V was
the producer.
Birmingham’s famous NEC is home to the OB compound for
trucks producing all sports (the boxing, table tennis, badminton, netball etc).
The NEC is also home to the IBC including the host broadcast with MCR and
logging area, and EVS server system as well as space for major rights
holders like the BBC and Channel 7 Australia.
Connectivity For Rights Holders
What has changed, accelerated by Covid, is that more rights
holders want to cover the games from a distance, sending fewer crew and
facilities to venues.
“This is the first CWG in a truly remote world,” says
Tippett. “Pre-Tokyo 2020, the concept for every multi-sport event was that the
RHBs are responsible for their own distribution of feeds from the event IBC.
The new world means that is not as clear cut any more so we have looked at
being more involved in that distribution to suit downstream workflows.
“We’ve made a basic package of feeds available as streams as
opposed to broadcast circuits. Lower rez streams are being distributed by the
organising committee themselves for use via IPTV around Birmingham or for
individual federations to access and analysts to watch performances.
“It is down to the host to ensure that rights holder needs
are catered for. This includes producing more content than ever before for
broadcasters to tailor coverage as well as making it all accessible to remote
production.
“We’ve had lots of discussion about connectivity and
distribution of feeds whether live, delayed or on-demand,” Tippett adds.
“There’s huge complexity. One broadcaster might want to produce using one
remote model and another will have a different version. It’s finding the common
ground that works for everybody based on how technology has changed.”
Gravity Media At CWG
Formerly the site of Birmingham’s Wholesale Markets,
Smithfield will be the home of the Basketball 3x3 and Beach Volleyball
competitions during the Games, expected to seat 2,500 and 4,000 spectators
respectively.
Gravity Media are tasked with designing, supplying and
operating the OB for these events which run in parallel.
“The idea for our tech solution is to service both events
separately – treating them as two independent OBs,” explains Andrew Goodman,
Project account manager, who is overseeing the technical build.
Gravity runs a flypack operation for all its events, giving
it the ability to quickly scale as required. Here, two flypacks are built each
containing the following:
Pro-Bel Sirius router with 128 x SDI inputs; an Aurora
control system and TallyMan; Evertz VIP x 324 input; sound embedded
with Lawo V__pros channel processing and Imagine Communications glue
with Riedel communications frame with 18 talkback panels.
Each is outfitted for 12 cameras including Sony HDCU-2500s
and a HDCU-4300 supports for slo-motion. There are 3 x EVS on each event with a
fourth on the basketball for video adjudication.
Audio mixing is on Lawo mc² 36 consoles with Lawo A__mic 8
as the interface boxes to bring audio back from the commentary and field of
play and also standup positions.
Gravity Media has developed a system that allows them to
connect field cameras over single SMPTE cable back to a Field Box. They call it
SCAMPI. Cameras are connected over 1x singlemode fibre cable with the SCAMPI
Truck Box in the Compound, where it interacts with RCPs and Controllers.
“This is essentially a way to transit video, data and power
for multicams down one single cable. The signal is broken out in the box at the
OB compound for the router and for iris, color control and any pan tilt and
focus control via multi-cam shading control CyanView RCP.
“The reasons we’re using this transit system is because on
the Basketball we need to mount a mini-cam behind the basketball board to look
through to the net. We’re using a second system on the beach volley,” Goodman
says.
The camera connected to SCAMPI on the Beach Volleyball is
a Dreamchip ATOM one SSM500, a high-speed camera that can be operated
in standalone or in EVS modes with iris and PTZF control over a CyanView
network. In standalone mode, replay and trigger is done via Stream Deck or
shuttle connected to the RCP. Replays are then stored in the camera's internal
storage. In EVS mode (as here) the RCP acts as a bridge between the EVS system
and the camera. It can playback at 500fps and has a 50fps output for cutting
into the programme.
The second reason is that Gravity have been asked by S+V to
provide a red indication light for the Beach Volleyball umpire to tell them
when the host production is showing a replay. The umpire can restart the match
when the light goes off.
“Because the OB compound is 350m of cable away from the
field of play the signal needed to go over fibre. Usually, you’d take a GPO
from the cable from the vision mixer but our development engineer was able to
find a way to use the Cyanview across Scampi to trigger the GPO from the Scampi
box and create a small circuit to power the light on and off meaning the signal
can be transported over fibre.”
Graphics, as across the entire Games, is by Swiss Timing.
“Our flypacks are designed to accommodate 12 camera OBs so
that means I take a template of that flypack and adapt it to the production
need,” Goodman says.
The flypack racks are wired ready to go so I can just
configure it as required.”
For instance, its OB for the 2021 I’m A Celebrity Get
Me Out of Here was a 124 camera solution. For the US Open, another
contract, the build is even bigger.
“It’s similar to a truck solution except that our kit
arrives in boxes and housed in portacabins.”
In this case, eight portacabins arrived on site on 21 June
before technical rig and rehearsals. Gravity itself is sending 12 crew, split
between the two events.
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