August 19, 2020
I have two games
today to broadcast. At 1:30 pm it is
Toronto against Brooklyn then at 6:30pm Boston entertains Philly. I like working the early games. The games that start at 9:00 pm, well that is
just too late in my book. Sure, we have
to concern ourselves with the west coast viewers and make sure they have a game
somewhere near prime time, but 9:00 pm is late.
Our call time was
8:30 am. People often ask me why we need to get there five hours before tipoff,
especially if everything is set up.
Well, sometimes I ask myself that same question. But here in the bubble, things are not the
same as under normal circumstances.
Because of the
incredible technical challenges with sharing equipment, having one network run operations
one way, while the other network operates another way, every possibility of
failure must be examined. From my point of view I am confident as I provide
maintenance on my camera prior to the broadcast that all is fine, but it is
what happens between my camera and all the electronics in between that results
in the final broadcast that must be checked and rechecked, and then checked
again before we hit air. Plus we need to
feed warmups to the various outlets taking our feed, build packages for our show,
and rehearse show content. Plus, we need
to eat.
It used to be the
camera feeds only fed the truck in which the broadcast was originating. Nowadays a multitude of news gathering
companies have access to whatever we shoot.
This usually results with us being on camera much earlier than expected,
and discipline with what we capture with our cameras. There really isn’t much of an issue with the
bubble games being selective in our shooting as there are no fans allowed so we
are constantly training our lenses on the players. But when there are fans, sometimes they can
be a bit distracting and inviting if you know what I mean. And with today’s emphasis on political
correctness and certain social movements it is best we keep our cameras facing
the court.
The Raptors had
little difficulty taking a two games to zero lead in this matchup with the
Nets. Brooklyn stayed with them for a
while but didn’t have the athletes to claim victory. From a technical standpoint, the lag time
with the virtual fans had been corrected.
Early on during the restart there was a significant time differential in
the transmission time of the fans being displayed on the screens throughout
each arena. Now the imagery is pretty
much real time. We do a promo for
Michelob Ultra once per half and it involves shooting the LED screens that show
the fans watching the game virtually while inserting a graphic over the various
shots along with the announcers voicing the product. The fans react immediately when they see
themselves whereas before they wouldn’t react until we were completely off the
shot of them. We keep improving day by
day I tell ya!
Before the second
game our director Howie Singer, who is a huge music buff, read us a note he
received from the bass player of the band “Lettuce.” I have never heard of Lettuce. I do not know what kind of music they play
but they are definitely a band because I looked them up. Anyway, the note read “Howie, just wanted to
thank you and all the people you work with for bringing these games into our
homes. We live in an odd world right now
and the work that you guys are doing provides a much needed escape from our
fucked up reality. Just want to thank
you and everyone else that is involved…”
Howie is good
friends with the members of this band and I thought it was pretty cool of the
bass player to take the time to send the text.
We don’t usually think of what we do as providing comfort or an escape
but in this case it did. That was nice
and it was appreciated by everyone on headsets.
Boston and Philly
was over by the middle of the second quarter. Ever since Ben Simmons went down
with a kneecap injury that ended his season, the 76ers have not been able to
regroup and play effectively against other teams. Joel Embiid played much better this game than
he did last time we saw him, but Boston has too many weapons. They lost one of their high scorers Gordon
Hayward to an ankle injury last game but they have a very strong bench to make
up for his loss. All the highlights
shown after this game were from our tight camera located in the yellow
zone. Basically it was a tight shot of
Embiid on the bench with his head buried in his jersey absorbing yet another
Philadelphia loss. The talk is the coach
Brett Brown will be let go after they are eliminated but it is no fault of his
that players go down with injuries.
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