Hot Shot

Dave Fields uses a a Sony HDC-1500 with a Canon KJ 20x8.5B KRS zoom lens to capture the action in the pits for DirecTV''s NASCAR HotPass telecast.

It's 9 o'clock in the morning on race day at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon. Twelve members of DirecTV's NASCAR HotPass production team are sardined into a small production office in a 50ft. mobile trailer. Outside, lightning crackles and the rain pours down. On everyone's mind — producers, directors, on-air announcers — is what to do if the rain continues. They go live in a few hours, but the race won't be run on a wet track. It's not one broadcast they have to worry about, but four separate telecasts on four channels, which go out to HotPass subscribers. Narrowcasting on satellite channels 795, 796, 797, and 798 in both SD and HD, HotPass offers viewers what it boasts is “a full-sensory experience of being at the track, in pit row, and behind the wheel.” And it lives up to the advertising. For 36 weeks during the race season, HotPass assigns production teams to four of the top drivers. Viewers get to choose which channel to watch, or they can flip back and forth during the race. It's truly where the future of telecasting is going, giving the audience more choices to select exactly what they want to watch.

Television at NASCAR is a huge undertaking every Sunday. There are seven or eight television productions coming out of a particular race. The television compound is a sight to behold: more than 30 trucks that move from racetrack to racetrack each week. More than 650 technicians, on-air personnel, producers, directors, and caterers swarm the TV village.

Among them is Tim Deroin, one of four HotPass producers, affectionately known as “TV Tim.” A former racecar driver himself, Deroin is passionate about his job. “There is a production trailer which consists of four compartments, what we call pods — individual control rooms that handle the programming on a particular channel,” he says. “A second trailer houses the audio mixers, robotic camera operators, and video technical personnel. In the main production unit, each pod has a technical director, a producer, a broadcast assistant, and an EVS operator.”

If you think the action is hot on the track, you need only stand in the hallway of the production trailer for a few minutes during the race. A cacophony fills the air as four producers call shots simultaneously, each concentrating on his or her individual driver — Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Greg Biffle, and Jimmie Johnson, to name a few. It's a wild, seemingly chaotic scene, but within each pod, there is a sense of control.

The Wednesday before each race, Executive Producer Chris Long, who pioneered the project, picks the four drivers to be followed on race day. “The goal is be a able to give the viewer the ability to watch the drivers they care about the most and not have to listen to anything else,” he says. Every Sunday, he monitors all four channels either onsite or back at the Los Angeles Broadcast Center.

Paul McCauley follows the cars around the track from the roof of the grandstands using a Sony HDC-1500 with a Canon
Digi Super 86X field lens.

The action is directed in a cubbyhole about the size of an Amtrak sleeper berth. The producer sits in the middle chair flanked by his broadcast associate (BA) and director/technical director (TD). In a small closet behind them is the EVS operator. The producer watches the action on a large Sony monitor, which mirrors the touchscreen switching monitor manned by the director/TD, who does his or her own switching. There are different prebuilt layouts used on the switcher with code names such as “three-up” or “big left.” The touchscreen switcher software is proprietary to Reality Check Studios of Los Angeles. TD Stephen Toth tells me they can put multiple sources on the screen all at once.

In the other boxes, there may be one of four dedicated HotPass cameras or any of a number of other cameras being used by the network, including in-car cameras. During green-flag racing, the network will always be in the upper-right corner so the viewer always sees what is on the network air. There is also race information, stats, and telemetry coming from the track and the racecar. “It's the future of where TV is going to be,” Toth says. “[It's] a great way to put on a great show inexpensively. We do the job of three or four trucks.”

According to Kevin Dresser of Reality Check Studios, the guts of the switcher is a Thomson Grass Valley Kayak HD 1.5 M/E switcher. Reality Check Studios developed touchscreen software to control the Kayak. It also speaks to the Vizrt Viz Engine, a graphics platform with realtime 3D rendering. So with the punch of a button, HotPass wipes, driver wipes, dissolves, or effects wipes can be activated.

Broadcast Associate Patrick Armstrong is in charge of timing the show, keeping track of stats, and building and airing graphics.

Next door, in their own production trailer, are the audio and robo departments. Sumner Thompson, of Bath, Maine — one of four HotPass audio mix engineers — has been with the NASCAR HotPass since it started in 2007. The program is mixed on a Yamaha M7CL-48 board, which Thompson says was designed as a PA board but works well for this application with 48 inputs.

At home, a button on the remote allows the viewer to select a number of different audio feeds — including network announcers, in-car chatter between the four drivers HotPass is covering for that race and their crew, and the announcers assigned to the individual drivers. There is also the option of listening to the in-car communications of 12 other drivers in the race. Viewers can vote online on the Wednesday before the race which drivers' voice communications will be carried.

In addition, there are two race announcers for each of the four drivers HotPass is following; one sits in an isolated booth and calls the action, while the second is down in the pits where he or she can interview drivers and crew chiefs or get the scoop on what's going on behind the scenes. Thompson says a lot of compression is used to suppress the loud background sounds and let the announcer's words come through clearly. (It amazed me they could be heard at all. I was down in the pits reporting on this story, and it's astonishing any on-air reporters can do their job. The decibel level is beyond human endurance; as you enter the pit area, one of the security guards hands everyone earplugs. Did I mention the smell of fuel exhaust and burning rubber?)

More than 30 trucks move from racetrack to racetrack each week for NASCAR broadcasts. More than 650 technicians, on-air personnel, producers, directors, and caterers swarm the TV village.

Handheld camera operator Dave Fields is right down in the action using a Sony HDC-1500 with a Canon KJ 20×8.5B KRS lens. He's a creative director for a North Carolina TV station when he's not working NASCAR. Fields says it can be pretty rough going down in the pits; you have to have eyes in the back of your head and work closely with the person who holds the transmission pole, who's also watching your back. “It's tough in the fact that you only get one chance,” he says. “It requires the skill of knowing the sport and doing PR with the crew, … knowing where you can be and where you can't be, and making sure you're not in their way and still being able to do your job. And keeping safe.”

A quarter of a mile away and seven stories up on the roof of the grandstands is camera operator Matt Thomas. His job is to maintain an extreme close-up of the designated HotPass car throughout the race using a Sony HDC-1000 HD camera and a Canon Digi Super 86XS field lens with image stabilization. He says it's not as easy as it looks. “We follow one car around the track all day long looking for battles behind and in front of that car,” he says. “[With this format,] you're constantly on 98 percent of the time. Running a hard camera, you have to have a lot of concentration and endurance out there. This track isn't bad. It's only a mile long. The bigger tracks like Talladega [Superspeedway are] a lot worse. Sometimes when I'm in turn one looking all the way to turn three, across the infield, you are at the end of a very long lens and there's no focus.”

To keep the camera operators sharp, the engineers purposely soften the image on the viewfinders, Thomas adds with a sigh. When the cars pit, the cameras can stop going round and round, but only for about 14 seconds. “And you're on your feet for the duration of the race, which can be more than 3 hours,” he says without blinking.

Back in the truck, Broadcast Associate Patrick Armstrong has his hands, and brain, full. Not only is he assisting Deroin, he's also in charge of timing the show, keeping track of stats, and building and airing the graphics. “I am a jack of all trades,” Armstrong says. “It's just being sharp, having your head into it. Racing is the most intense of all sports. It's a lot of realtime data, rpms, miles per hour. It's being on top of it, being sharp, and catching things that may not be right — catching erroneous data. You can do a million things right during the show; and you do one thing wrong, and everyone will remember that. With my job, you are only as good as your last race.”

Armstrong is good at what he does and is one of the younger members of the crew. This is the second year for HotPass, and he has been with the team since day one, so he must be doing something right. He says he's thankful that HotPass has opened up a lot of new jobs for folks just starting out in their careers. And while there is competition amongst the four Bas on crew, there's also a lot of camaraderie. “We travel so much together, 37 weeks a year,” he says. “These guys have become brothers. I spend more time with these guys than my family. We are producing four shows on four channels, but the overall show is one package, so we have to work together. We share. We are only as good as the other channels.”

The EVS XT[2] server, affectionately known as “Elvis,” is a tapeless, hard-disk editing system. It integrates live editing, instant replay, highlights editing, slow- and super-motion control, as well as a sophisticated nonlinear editing function — all at the fingertips of a seasoned video editor. And it is the staple in any sports production truck. HotPass is no exception. Each pod has its own EVS system with four inputs and two outputs. In the two days I was reporting on this story, all four EVS rooms were going nonstop, building background stories, show opens, highlight reels, and a multitude of other playback elements. “One of the things we like to do is a build a radio package,” Deroin says. “We cut together some of the more interesting radio transmissions. [We also do] video B-roll, accidents, great pit stops — all captured with four channels of EVS. We can build all kinds of neat features, recaps, and things like that.”

Deroin says his least favorite aspect of the job is race traffic. NASCAR racing draws crowds of more than 100,000 fans. “It can take hours, especially if you have a plane to catch,” Deroin says. “When you sit down in your chair and the race starts, it seems like 10 minutes and you're done — when in reality, a couple or 3 hours have passed. It goes that quick. And then you're 2 hours in traffic.” His sentiments are echoed throughout the crew.

By race time, the rain has stopped, the clouds have parted, and the race goes on as scheduled. Does anyone know where I can get my ears checked?

Bill Miller is owner of Bill Miller Video Productions. He has been producing films and video for more than four decades. Reach him at bill@billmillerfilm.com.

To comment on this article, email the Digital Content Producer editorial staff at feedback@digitalcontentproducer.com