LOS ANGELES—Identifying the obstacles COVID-19 has created in live sports is relatively straightforward: cramped production vehicles designed for close collaboration, not social distancing, exposure while traveling to different venues every week and contact with others on site.

Overcoming those challenges has required a lot of effort—not only a rethink of workflows but also a fast implementation to stand up alternatives to on-site production in mere months, says Michael Davies, Fox Sports senior vice president, Field & Technical Operations.

“What we’re talking about is not necessarily a new idea—other networks have done similar things," says Davies. “What is new is the fact that it spun up so very quickly and so universally adopted.”

Last Saturday’s [Oct. 24] Fox Sports lineup, six college football games and Game 4 of the World Series, offers a glimpse of what Davies means. “It was pretty incredible to see how many different ways we approached each production,” he says.

While traditional on-site production was used in Arlington, Texas, for production of Game 4 of the World Series from Globe Life Field, operation of EVS replays and Stats were done remotely in Los Angeles for the Penn State-Indiana, Boise State-Utah State and Ohio State University-Nebraska college football games, as was video editing for the OSU pre-game.

Further, Fox Sports relied on its Home Run Production (HRP) remote production capabilities from “the Vault” in Los Angeles for the Air Force-San Jose State and Oklahoma State-Iowa State games and HRP from its Charlotte, N.C., facility for production of the University of Kansas-Kansas State rivalry.

“We have a finite amount of room in a production truck, which supplied some guidance for the larger shows,” he says. “It might have six EVS [stations], but at social distance maybe I can only fit three. The same thing with support and statistics.” 

Freeing up space—whether in production trucks or in the announce booth—to maintain proper social distance has played a large role in directing Fox Sports as it has navigated producing sports during COVID-19, he says.

“We still want to preserve the workflow that makes our game coverage, yet we want to peel off those areas where we can and do things [at production centers] in Los Angeles [and Charlotte],” he says.

The Vault in Los Angeles—a former tape library converted for production—is a roughly 3,000-square-foot facility with 32 workstations on the first floor that can be used for a variety of tasks ranging from EVS slow-motion replay and graphics to statistics.

The second floor of the Vault is outfitted with two complete control rooms to support Home Run Production instances in which video and audio from the venue are transported back for production, he says.

“On site [for HRP games], the truck is relatively empty. There’s no TDs [technical directors], no EVS’s—sometimes one to handle the Super Motion—but it’s generally a ghost town in there,” says Davies.

It’s too much, however, to do back-to-back game productions using the same facilities for HRP, so the broadcaster alternates between the Vault and its Charlotte facility, he says.

HRP also can encompass the talent used to cover games, giving Fox Sports the option to have them on-site or in a studio equipped with the same telestrators and setup they use in the announce booth, he adds.

Davies credits Fox Sports engineering leadership, including Mike Wilken, senior vice president, Systems & Technology, and Kevin Callahan and Brad Cheney, both vice presidents, Field Operations/Engineering, with standing up these remote facilities quickly to adapt the workflow to COVID-19.

“Those are the guys who are making magic on a day-to-day basis, and came up with this architecture,” says Davies.

While marquee events like the World Series continue to be produced on-site with a more traditional workflow, having the ability to peel away some functions or even all of production control to its facilities in Charlotte and Los Angeles has played a big part in keeping crews safe during the pandemic.

“We’ve kept everybody safe, touch wood, throughout all of our productions,” says Davies. 

DARLINGTON, S.C.—NASCAR will be one of the first professional leagues to return with live competition following the outbreak of coronavirus in March. With a series of seven races over 11 days between two locations, Fox Sports has been tasked with bringing back the thrill of race day to fans while keeping both its production crew and NASCAR team members safe from the potential spread of COVID-19.

The NASCAR season will get rolling again with the Darlington 400 at the Darlington Raceway in South Carolina on May 17, airing of Fox (additional races will be aired on FS1). Michael Davies, senior vice president of technical operations for Fox Sports, spoke with TV Technology about how the broadcast crew will meet the demands of the production while staying safe

SOLID BANDWIDTH

It all begins with something that was put in place even before COVID-19. The connectivity installed at racetracks—which was added just a few years ago with help from AT&T, according to Davies—enables crew at the track to communicate with others off-site.

“We have an immense amount of bandwidth that we’re able to share with NASCAR to be able to connect those sites,” said Davies. “We are able to leverage that technology to look and work a little bit differently.”

For example, remote operations.

A number of crew members will be working remotely for these races, including the announcers. Those working remotely were able to get some practice over the past two months with “iRacing,” virtual races that NASCAR organized and broadcast, something that made the production crew more comfortable with the new reality, said Davies.

There will still be a good number of crew members at the track on race day, albeit slimmed down. Davies described mobile production units as the “antithesis of social distancing,” and as a result will have a limited number of crew operating from within on race day. There will also be fewer crew members covering the pit areas, as NASCAR has adapted how race teams handle pit stops.

A WIDER VIEW

Still, Davies expects the look of the race to be similar for those watching on TV, as most of the main camera positions will be in place, as well as in-car cameras. There may even be an advantage to the fact that these races will be held without any fans in the stands.

“I’m looking forward to see how we can use the entire racetrack, whereas before we had to work around, obviously, a very large audience,” Davies said. “That could be one of the interesting side effects of things not only in NASCAR but other sports as well, where you might actually have places where you couldn’t put cameras and now you can.”

Of course, there are extra safety precautions that need to be taken to try and prevent the spread of the virus. In pre-COVID days, a lot of equipment would be shared among crew members, something that is not advisable in this current environment. The solution was easy when it came to headsets—everyone got their own—but for cameras and other equipment, Davies said they will be relying on UVC robots that can sterilize the equipment between uses. Mobile units will also have a specific cleaning regimen.

SMALLER FOOTPRINT

Fox Sports is also attempting to minimize its footprint, as well as its ease of operation, by using the same crew and equipment for all of the scheduled races, driving the mobile units from Darlington to Charlotte, N.C.

“The problem with NASCAR is it’s a pretty purpose-built kind of deal, so if you were to use different facilities and what not, what you would gain in potentially in a little less driving you would lose again in how much and how many people it would take to set up,” Davies explained.

At this time, NASCAR has not announced any additional races beyond May 27, but Davies does share that there are plans to continue the season after that date. As the season progresses, Davies expects that Fox Sports’ broadcast procedures will evolve as well.

“Safe be said, we’re looking to learn from this first one, and we know the production is going to evolve,” Davies said. “I’ve just encouraged everybody to be agile and that unlike a lot of other things where you can just say, ‘alright, this is what we’re going to do for the entire season,’ we just need to be ever vigilant on change. 

“And with a dynamic situation like this, it’s important to have your eyes open in terms of better ways of doing things as technology grows, as the response and ability to do different things grows,” Davies added. “While I’m really happy where we are starting out, I have no doubt that things will evolve as we move forward.”

The Darlington 400 will air on Sunday, May 17, at 3 p.m. ET on Fox.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.—The sheer number of possibilities today’s technology puts on the table for television production—especially high-profile ones where there is no dearth of money or people—makes it imperative that the way technology is applied enhances storytelling rather than getting in the way, says Michael Davies, senior vice president of field operations at Fox Sports.

“We are in a technological era where we are sort of in a dream—if you can dream it, you can do it,” says Davies, who this weekend will do his 13th Daytona 500 production. “That creates a lot of opportunities, but it can be a bit of slippery slope.”

This year’s Daytona 500 (Sunday, Feb. 17, starting at 2 p.m. EST on Fox and also livestreamed on the Fox Sports Go app) is a case in point. While Fox Sports will deploy all of the technology normally associated with the production of such a high-profile race, it also aims to enhance coverage with several tech goodies making their Daytona debut, including the high-speed Fox Sports Rail Cam, a body jib, enhanced data analytics and a new 3D virtual studio.

Pre-race, the challenge for Davies and Fox Sports producers and directors is separating the wheat from the chaff when considering technology.

“There certainly are many technologies out there that might seem cool on the surface, but in terms of an actual tool for what the producers and directors actually use and then finally what winds up on the screen, it’s a little bit more of a vetting process,” he says.

“A pretty good way to start [in determining what tech will enhance storytelling] is something called ‘the bar test,’” Davies explains. “The bar test is simply can a viewer understand what we are doing from a technology standpoint while sitting in a bar. And the other thing we determine is whether a technology will show the audience things they just otherwise can’t see.”

The rail cam, which Fox Sports first used at the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif., and Charlotte Motor Speedway in Charlotte, N.C., is a good example of the tests.

“It’s often quite difficult to convey on television how fast the cars are going,” says Davies. But the rail cam, the work of robotic dolly specialist Mega Trax, provides a dynamic shot that does the trick.

Positioned behind the inside wall of Turn 2, the camera can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in about three seconds and reach speeds exceeding 90 mph along its 1,000-foot rail.

“Say the camera is going 80 mph and the cars coming out of that turn are going about 180 mph, the shot lets viewers see the foreground and background moving,” he explains.

Another approach is to go against traffic at 80 mph with the cars coming at the camera at 180 mph. “That’s a dynamic shot that looks great,” says Davies.

In terms of passing the tests, not only does the Fox Sports Rail Cam convey speed to the viewers, it also offers a solution for covering the backstretch. “One of the things we always struggle with is covering the backstretch in the most meaningful way,” says Davies.

“We’ll always get everything, but having a camera like this in a place where you don’t generally get a lot of good close-up shots is pretty cool, especially on the inside wall.”

The body jib, commercially branded the DigiBoom from Redrock Micro, is another new production element that passed the tests. At the Daytona 500, Fox Sports will position an operator wearing the body jib inside the pits to capture stabilized cameras shots.

“It’s like a Steadicam,” says Davies. “In fact, I have a Steadicam operator using it. But with this, you can get high—about 6 feet over [what’s being shot]. You can also go right down on the ground, which you can’t do with a Steadicam.”

The body jib and stabilized camera will be used to get a variety of shots providing a new perspective on the race, including shots of the pit boxes at eye-level with the crew chiefs looking on and shots over the wall showing cars coming at viewers as they go to their pit stalls, he says.

Yet another new production addition for this year’s race is a new touchscreen analysts in the booth will use to break down data in ways that have never before been seen in NASCAR, according to Fox Sports.

“The one great thing about NASCAR is you get more real-time data and real-time telemetry than any other sport,” says Davies.

At Daytona, Fox Sports will use loop data NASCAR captures at multiple point on the track to enable analysts to identify important race changes, such as when each driver is making up or losing positions. The touchscreen format will make it possible for Fox analysts to tell accurate stories about the race in near-real time.

The new 60-by-60-foot virtual studio Fox launched for the start of the 2019 NASCAR Cup series also will contribute mightily to the storytelling. The Charlotte, N.C.-based space enables 3D analysis of racetracks, cars and race shops, and will interact with live coverage of the Daytona 500. (Editor’s note: See “New NASCAR Studio Puts Fox Sports in VR, AR Driver Seat.”)

Of course, these new technologies are layered on a well-established complement of tested production technology, which includes seven main mobile production units, two satellite uplinks, 2MW of power independent of local sources, 12 production trucks, 20 manned cameras, three in-track Gopher Cameras, Super Slow Motion HD and 4K cameras, a 1,100-fps X-Mo camera at the start/finish line, 10 high-speed robotic cameras and 12 on-board in-car camera packages.

While Davies is a champion of the technology that will be used to produce the event, he is quick to acknowledge that it’s the people behind the production who ultimately are responsible for telling the best stories of the race.

“We were very lucky to have won a Sports Emmy for Technical Team Remote [in 2018],” says Davies. “What is different about this NASCAR crew is these men and women eat, breathe and sleep the sport. If you go there and start talking to people, it is like a living, breathing history of NASCAR among the people who work on the show.”

KANSAS CITY, MO.—Something strange happened during the first game of the World Series that had nothing to do with baseball. Two days after Fox Sports’ lost coverage of Game 1 of the World Series between the Kansas City Royals and New York Mets for a brief time, the production team is still searching for answer as to why both the primary and backup generators in Fox Sports production truck went down.

As Cat Entertainment Services and Fox engineers attempt to identify the source of the power outage, there are a few theories thus far. One possibility is that there was a problem with the electronics and that the computer shut the generators down. Or, there might have been an issue with contaminated fuel.

“At this point we are not really sure,” said Michael Davies, senior vice president of technical and field operations for Fox Sports, in an interview with Broadcasting & Cable. “Those guy [the generator suppliers] are industry leaders and the largest supplier of entertainment generators out there. We’ve done many events with them—the U.S. Open, Super Bowl are powered by their generators. We like them because they have an incredibly good maintenance record.”

Clearly, this mysterious technical gaff reminds us that nothing is ever foolproof. If there is any silver lining to the situation, Davies says it is that it will “give everyone an opportunity to think about what their power plans were and to go over their own protocols and get a lot smarter. I think it will catalyze a lot of discussion in the industry.”

You can read B&C's full discussion with Michael Davies here.