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Hello Hollywood tech nerds!
In this week’s post:
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Folks it’s inevitable: I am going to be writing about the Super Bowl today. I know, I know, you’ve had enough. Give it a rest!
However, since this is not a sports-focused newsletter, I won’t burden you with my post-game analysis or my ranking of this year’s Super Bowl against others from the past, or even regaling you with the tale of my Aunt Joan’s Super Bowl party which resulted in multiple arrests and restraining orders. Instead, I’m just going to point you to some interesting info about the interesting behind-the-scenes efforts to bring the Super Bowl to TV. The remit of this newsletter!
Sports Video Group has terrific breakdowns of this year’s Super Bowl production elements. Even if you don’t care about sports, I’m sure you care about how sports is covered! Utilizing over 175 Sony cameras “across broadcast, aerial, POV, cinema, still photography, and in-venue production at Levi’s Stadium, with Sony VENICE 2, BURANO, Alpha, and HDC systems supporting everything from NBC’s broadcast to the halftime show to sideline storytelling.”
More camera details:
Sony’s HDC-F5500V is making its debut in a Super Bowl, providing a shallow–depth-of-field look to the wide shots for pre/postgame and halftime shows. In addition, the BRC-AM7 PTZ camera will be used for the first time at a Super Bowl to provide auto tracking.
The versatile HDC-P50A and P50 POV cameras will be deployed for capture from unique setups and vantage points and with some used at high frame rates. Among the uses will be as part of the wired Skycam solution, as a sideline Steadicam, and on the walkway between the locker room and stadium to document player entrances and exits.
In all, NBC’s camera complement will comprise 35 HDC-5500’s and two HDC-4300’s, 18 HDC-Series POV cameras (six HDC-P50A 4X-slo-mo 4K systems, 11 HDC-P50’s, and one HDC-P31), two PTZ cameras (an ILME-FR and a BRC-AM7), and three aerial/specialty systems (two ILX-LR1’s and an HDC-P50).
Five Sony cinema cameras — three Sony PXW-FX9’s and two Sony PMW-F55’s — will also play major roles in NBC’s coverage.
The Super Bowl is obviously not just sports, there’s the entire other matter of the halftime show:
The NFL’s halftime-show production partner Funicular Goats will rely on 11 Sony VENICE 2 digital cinema cameras, three Sony BURANO digital cinema cameras, and one Sony FR7 Cinema Line PTZ camera to capture all the halftime festivities with a truly cinematic look.
Wired has its own informative look at how the production elements of Bad Bunny’s halftime show came together, including the reason the design was on a much-shortened timeline from past halftime shows:
[Art director Shelley] Rodgers… and his wife were also working on a much more truncated timeline than in years past. Generally, the artists’ concept for the halftime show gets approved around Thanksgiving. Then the team has a couple of months to fabricate, source set pieces, and figure out all the logistics. This time around, it wasn’t approved until around the new year—partially because of negotiations between what Bad Bunny was hoping for (those carts full of vegetation) and the solution the Rodgers’ provided (hundreds of costumed extras).
Last and certainly least this year were the commercials, the general summary of which TheWrap accurately summarizes as “dystopian”:
Middle-Earth Film School
It’s been (gulp) 25 years since The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring was released and besides my own mortality, it also got me to thinking: could anything on this scale get made and released today? I think the answer is NO!
If you love all things LOTR, I strongly encourage you to check out some of the BTS from the films, which you can find in various locations online. It’s like a mini film school!
Kernels (3 links worth making popcorn for)
Here’s a round-up of cool and interesting links about Hollywood and technology:
Video game consoles built streaming, until it outgrew them. (link)
How much will YouTube TV’s new sports package cost? (link)
Filmmaker Gore Verbinski on AI. (link)