Last year, I was lucky enough to be asked to shoot stand-up comedian John Caparulo.(Here's a clip running on his site. My camera had all of the close ups!) Caparulo made a triumphant return to the buckeye state when he brought his straight-talking (OK, potty-mouthed) humor to a sold out show at the Ohio Theatre. Caparulo was born in East Liverpool, Ohio and like me, is a Kent State grad. Unlike me, a mere amateur, Caparulo is a professional wiseass!
The show was hilarious! I had to literally let go of the camera several times because I was laughing so hard...and, best of all, the check didn't bounce! All in all, not a bad day for a TVCommando.
Now that our schedule has eased a bit at the boxing venue, we've been able to hit the must see landmarks of China and Beijing. Monday it was Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Very impressive...
Several people have asked technical and production questions regarding our Olympic venue, on which NBC affiliated network our shows air (CNBC), and other behind the scenes TV tidbits about how the sports are covered, so here’s the skinny:
In terms of event coverage (not including news), basically there are two sets of broadcasters working in Beijing, the Host Broadcasters (the world feed known as BOB) and NBC. While NBC has paid a pagoda full of cash for the right to broadcast the games back to the US, the Host Broadcasters are charged with providing TV coverage for everyone else.
What the NBC folks have done is rank their Olympic venues on an A, B, C scale, divided up their assets and augmented coverage at the smaller venues with these BOB video feeds.
At our venue, we’re ranked a “C” with a small, but mighty crew of 30. (Track & Field has a crew of 100.) At the Worker's Indoor Arena NBC has three dedicated cameras, one shoots reporter Jim Gray in the interview area, another shoots the “play-by-play and analyst/former boxer” at the desk ringside, while the third (the one I’m manning) shoots Anchor Fred Rogan in a small “booth” perched in the upper deck of the arena. Those cameras are connected to a whole separate (and portable) HDTV control room that has been built outside in the parking lot of the Arena right next to the BOB broadcasters.
Simultaneously to our coverage, the BOB feed has nine cameras covering every one of the 286 boxing matches, so what our NBC production team has done is to structure their CNBC shows to seamlessly shoot our anchors and then to “cut” to the world feed of all of the actual boxing matches. But like much of what’s on TV it’s really a constructed reality. At home, it looks to you like NBC is “covering” boxing, and technically we are, but not without a little technical slight of hand.
Much to the NBC crew's ire, trying to communicate with home via the Internet is not easy here in China. The wireless router failed in our building (overloaded!) so I'm a couple of days late and filing from my work site. Here's a look at my office for the next few weeks. We are covering 286 boxing matches!
Here's our schedule. All of our matches air on CBNC/Telemundo.
A History of Olympic Boxing is here.
My camera with teleprompter. (Notice there's no viewfinder. I'm using a small monitor gaffe-taped to a garbage can underneath the tripod! Hey nothing but the best...)
My view of the ring. The anchor (Fred Rogan) will sit in the chair next to the HD monitor.
