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MillimeterRough Ride
Feb 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Bill Miller
Behind the scenes with the Versus HD production crew.
In the Yes Productions television truck outside, Technical Director Wayne Robertson switches the show, which is produced live-to-tape, on a Grass Valley Kalypso switcher.
The production
The Saturday and Sunday shows are produced live-to-tape for delayed broadcast around the world. Loverro says he thinks this gives the broadcast a live feel. Back in the television truck, there's as much action as there is in the arena. It's controlled chaos with a beat and rhythm of its own. Directions fly back and forth in a whirlwind dance. No yelling and screaming; it's not David Hagen's or Loverro's style. There is a sense of urgency parallel to the train wreck that could happen at any moment in the arena. Wayne Robertson, of Marietta, Ga., is technical director, and he switches the show on a Grass Valley Kalypso switcher. Four feeds are produced simultaneously in the multiple layers of the switcher using electronic memory fed by a PC. There's the Versus feed, an international feed, a house feed for the PBR to show on giant HD monitors in the auditorium, and a clean feed with no graphics.
“Before this switcher, you couldn't have produced essentially four different shows,” says Robertson, who talks with a deep southern drawl. “Now it's preprogrammed, and everything switches with one push of the button.”
Still, it's as fast paced as any sporting event. “I've been doing this show for over four years, and I try not to second guess the director,” Robertson says. “If you do, you tend to make mistakes.”
Digital editing on the show is fast and furious. Bumps, show opens, and teases are edited at Versus headquarters in Stamford, Conn., on an Avid Symphony Nitris. Versus has the largest Avid Unity Isis storage arrays in the northeast, and media is shared through Avid Interplay. Other elements are strung together the day of the show or even while the event is taking place. At the heart of editing is the EVS Live Slow Motion hard disk recorder, fondly nicknamed “Elvis.” It has replaced the need for live tape handlers, and each EVS station can handle eight inputs and four outputs in both standard- and high-definition signals. An operator can cue a replay before the action finishes, similar to TIVO at home. Bob Brawner, of Seattle, and David Degelia, of Dallas, are at the controls while producer Dave Osbourne, of New York, calls the replays and structures bumps and teases. Osbourne's amazing brain stores thousands of bytes of information about previous rides, the cowboys, and the bulls — which adds great depth to the look of the show.
“This job takes a person who can multifunction,” Degelia says. “A person who can work under pressure. We might not finish an edit until 1 second before it goes on air.” Unlike baseball, which is very slow, bull riding is going a hundred miles an hour from the first tally light. After the show, the team uses the EVS to edit shows together and send clips to hard drives for temporary storage and to an HDCAM recorder for permanent storage. Digital signals are beamed via satellite to Comcast control center in Denver for distribution.
Bull riding is all about statistics. Both the rider and the bull are scored, and in the event of the buck off, the bull still gets a score. All of these numbers, plus the names of the bulls and riders and graphic-design elements, make it to the screen via TV Graphics, in Freeport, Texas. Jenifer Gemisis, of Memphis, Tenn., is huddled beneath a wool blanket in the cool truck, running a Chyron Duet character generator. Todd Weber, of Orlando, Fla., is in charge of data and live scoring, and his computers are tied directly to the PBR's data stream.
David Degelia uses the EVS Live Slow Motion hard disk recorder, fondly nicknamed “Elvis,” to cue replays before the action finishes.
New this year is scoring on PDAs. Each of four judges types in rider and bull scores on a PDA, which show up instantly on TV screens. “It used to take 30 seconds to get a score; now they are showing up live as the judges type,” Weber says. “There is greater accuracy, information is available instantly, and the show moves quicker.”
“We like a warm look to the show,” says video technician Yogi Commare, of Sturbridge, Mass., who remotely controls the cameras, along with Dave Goldsmith, on 10 parallel Ikegami Operation Control Panels. Touchscreens have replaced pots and sliders, making several layers of controls instantly available.
“I paint the cameras manually, and I try to avoid over-saturating,” Commare says. “With the new HD cameras, we can get away with a lot less light, and some arenas have very poor lighting. I like to give the camera operators an iris of at least 3.0 to help them with depth of field since the action is so fast.”
She says she also likes the fact that the Yes truck comes with Ikegami HTM-1517R “real glass monitors,” both at her station and in front of the director. “You can't really judge picture quality, even in high-def, on flatscreen displays,” she says. “Now, the director and producer see the exact picture being broadcast.”
In the back of the bus is Lance Gordon, of San Antonio, who is madly manually mixing the show on a Solid State Logic MT Plus digital audio console. “This board is primarily found in recording studios,” says Gordon, who must find a balance between the loud music, the public address announcer, and the Versus announcing staff. There are mics on all the cameras and on Shorty Gorham, one the brave men with multi-colored shirts called bull fighters who aid the cowboys in making their escape once the ride is over. “You can't get much closer to the action than that,” Gordon says. While the board is automated, the audio engineer still tracks all of the announcer mics and other sound sources manually, following cues from the director and producer.
One of the unsung heroes of the crew is associate director Rich O'Connor, of Port Washington, N.Y. He helps Loverro format the show and keeps Hagen on time. His job also involves voice contact with the PBR event director on the arena floor, coordinating commercial breaks and changes in bulls or riders, and keeping focus where it should be.
The end
6 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 13, 2008. The bulls are back on the big rigs headed for the next location. The iron bullpens are coming down, dirt is bulldozed out of the arena, and the last of the video cables are cleaned and put away. Talk is of the pending Northeast snow storm and cancelled flights. The crew hopes to be flying home to stay for a few days; some haven't seen their own beds since before the New Year. In less than a week, the Versus gang will gather in California to do it all again.
“This is my second family, my home away from home,” Olden says as he packs his laptop. A bull rider hobbles by, his ego bruised more than his body this night. “See ya in Fresno,” Olden calls out. A wave of the hand signals all is well.
The show moves on.
Bill Miller is owner of Bill Miller Video Productions. He has been producing films and video for more than four decades. Reach him at bill@billmillerfilm.com.
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