Capturing the drama and excitement of live sports has become the ultimate high-wire act in modern television production. Consider the pressures of covering a live event with no second takes, millions of highly discriminating and knowledgeable customers scrutinizing your every move, and that every play has the potential to make history.
- Skip Levens, Quantum
TV has had a major influence on how we see the world, including how we see sport. The 1936 Berlin Olympics was the world's first live televised sporting event. The BBC broadcast the Games to 500 people using only 30 lines of resolution through a 240-line Baird intermediate film system. This was the event which showed the world what it meant to experience athletic excellence which otherwise would have been inaccessible to them.
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However, even before this, the media was already creating engaging narratives from sports games: 1921 saw sport’s first voice broadcast of a boxing match between Johnny Dundee and Johnny Ray*, and from this day forward, live sport broadcast established itself as a pivotal part of modern Western culture.
The quotation above from US Film and TV producer, Skip Levens, effectively defines the significance of liveness in sport. I made contact with Levens to learn more about live sports coverage. Skip pointed me in the direction of the Notre Dame Studio’s director of Broadcast Technology, Scott Rinehart. Rinehart oversees all sports broadcast production at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, and his efforts have not only dramatically boosted coverage of American Football, but many other sports at the university as well. The profits generated from Rinehart and Notre Dame Studio’s work went onto fund the a $400 million expansion of the university and its sporting establishments in 2014, demonstrating a beneficial impact coverage of sports can have on communities. Scott kindly agreed to discuss his opinions on the sports TV broadcast and film industry with me.
Since starting up in the industry when he was just 15 years old, Rinehart has always seen sport - both through doing and watching - as a form of escapism: “a way to forget problems and a way to bond with others over a common love/affiliation”. However he believes the current problem is “that politics has crept into sports and is ruining the experience for many people”. An enormous contemporary appeal of sport is that it does provide an escape; one where for a brief moment, we can be free from life's complexities, and rather immersed in an art of physical exertion.
I discussed with Scott whether he felt technological developments have helped or hindered the sports themselves. He said it “swings both ways. Being able to put cameras and mics into places never before possible has improved the experience for viewers. That's the positive. The negative is it puts more pressure on engineering to deliver those signals and on the technicians (audio operators for example) to use those new tools to their maximum potential. Innovation never stops. Sometimes it is good, sometimes not. But you have to try to see what happens”. I completely agree with Rinehart's explanation, especially as he highlights the significance of the high pressure this new technology places on production teams. In our current society, technology creates a sense of convenience for the audience. We are immersed into the world of the media and in turn, have become complaisant when immediacy is not accessible.
With the breadth of sports Scott films being so diverse, - for instance, during the interview he explained how he was filming with American singer-songwriter, Garth Brooks, that evening - I was curious to know if he experiences difficulties when filming, or if the sports performers or official has disagreed with the media’s position for the sake of the sports in hand. Rinehart responded saying he experiences the greatest confrontation and danger when filming the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR): “Robotics allowed broadcasters to put cameras into the corners and on the walls. Then with fibre coming into wider use, the latency from human action to happening at the camera was reduced to nothing. That was really cool to see”. Again, Scott demonstrated how with ever-growing technology such as fibre, the world really is the broadcast industry's oyster.
Scott is additionally responsible for shaping the sports-media industry himself however. He is responsible for NASCAR’s first video replay system, which allows officers to view all 18 cameras at once to make rulings: “I'm sure someone and sometime didn't like the results, but the officials were happy, so all was good”, Scott adds. Recently, video replay has taken the fore in college sports games, and Rinehart believes him and his team “have to be ready”: “All we can do is provide the officials the best views we can of the action. That means more POV-style cameras focused on lines and nets. Sometimes it goes your way, sometimes not”.
In discussing which recent developments in the TV broadcast/film industry have excited Scott, he explained: “The expansion of IP [(Internet Protocol)] technology is great for the future, especially as we really do not know yet all the ways it will help us. Expanded bandwidth on equipment SFP's will help [too as] that is always a problem. Personally I am not big on 4K as consumers [as I] can't really see a benefit and the file sizes are crushing storage systems and those budgets. I am big on HDR because one can see the difference. I was terrible on these in high school, but HDR is to HD as HD was to SD: a difference which people can see and buy into”.
And with that I agree: both the public audience and production companies become excited by an improved viewing experience, which higher definition can provide. Therefore, production companies invest into the better quality, to entice audiences who are attracted by the improved experience, and in turn make more profit. Despite my wishes that it was purely produced for the love of athletic excellence, I can begrudgingly accept the sports film/TV broadcast industry is not one to hide away from commercialism and entertainment.
And with that I agree: both the public audience and production companies become excited by an improved viewing experience, which higher definition can provide. Therefore, production companies invest into the better quality, to entice audiences who are attracted by the improved experience, and in turn make more profit. Despite my wishes that it was purely produced for the love of athletic excellence, I can begrudgingly accept the sports film/TV broadcast industry is not one to hide away from commercialism and entertainment.
Interview source: Interview with Scott Rinehart on 23rd October 2018
* Westinghouse station KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania broadcast a 10-round, boxing match between Johnny Dundee and Johnny Ray
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