The Best Mistake In Live Sports Production
I absolutely love sports broadcasts. I think they are the truest form of production because while there is a ton of prep, 90% of the show is on the fly. You can prepare all day long for what you think will happen but in the end, once the game starts, it’s all out of the window.
Some of the most iconic events in American history have been sporting events - the 1980 Olympics, (for me) Sid Bream’s slide in 1991, Hank Arron’s 715th homerun, the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup, and the list goes on and on.
One memory that has long stuck in my mind was Tiger Woods at the 2015 Masters. The Famous “Chip On 16” will live in eternity as one of the best shots in PGA history. The tension, the difficulty, the camera work…. ALL amazing.
Check out the video of that magical moment before you move on in the article:
How awesome! Earlier today, I was killing the back half of my lunch break on Instagram and came across something that really rocked me… The camera work was a mistake. The TD didn’t do what they were told. Seriously, the TD just ignored the director and it created, in my opinion, the best moment in PGA history.
Click the image to watch in Instagram.
I immediately got up and found a different way to kill the time…. So here we are. There are so many lessons in this video that you can share now because of the timeliness.
The number of cameras to cover the Masters varies depending on the source but a fun project for your students this weekend may be to watch for 30 minutes and count the number of cameras they think they saw - If you can record that time, it may be a way to energize a Monday class.
The technology needed to cover the 365-acre Augusta National is a lesson in itself - Think of the number of cameras, the number of wireless signals for those cameras, the number of wireless signals for the audio elements, the signals for communications,... the list goes on and on. A great conversation could be to discuss how those signals are managed so everyone can do their job at the same time.
How about just the number of people it takes to make a production like the Masters happen. That list could be a mile long. You can talk about the financials of the whole project solely in terms of the human capital - food, shelter, transportation, etc.
The potential topics related to the masters is endless but I will leave you with some vocabulary words just in case you want to give it a swing (only pun I am doing… I promise)… I think you can figure out how to get the list….
Click the image above to download the XLS file.
Meet the Author, Tom White
Tom White is the Education and House of Worship Specialist at Amitrace. Tom's role is to help educators build better programs through better training, planning, and equipment.
Before joining Amitrace, Tom was the Broadcast Engineer at Grady College of Journalism and Communication at the University of Georgia. Prior to that role, Tom taught at Morgan County High School and Rockdale Career Academy where he and his student produced thousands of live streams for sports, news, and community events.
Tom’s program at the Rockdale Career Academy received the NFHS Network Program Of The Year in 2016 and his program at Morgan County High School received the New Program of the Year title in 2018. Tom has been a long time contributor to many publications and is the host of Teaching to The Test Pattern Podcast.
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