CrossFit Games 2022: Production Team Is Once Again Onsite in Full Force Six trucks, a crew of 250, 35+ cameras, and campus-wide fiber are deployed By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor
Thursday, August 4, 2022 - 3:08 pm
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After more than three years fraught with front-office shakeups and pandemic-related hurdles, the CrossFit Games are back at full strength this week at Alliant Energy Center in Madison, WI. And the production team is onsite at full strength, returning to 2018 equipment levels with an army of CrossFit Games production vets. Deploying six mobile units, a crew of more than 250, 35-plus cameras, and a comprehensive campus-wide fiber backbone, this year's operation is on par with the massive productions seen during the CrossFit Games' peak.
The CrossFit Games return to the Alliant Energy Center in Madison, WI, this week.
We're basically back full strength compared to where we left off in 2018 before the nature of the Games changed, says Senior Coordinating Producer Joe Novello. And it's exciting to have all the greatest talent that we have been able to recruit over the years back again as well. Walking in the compound this year put a huge smile on my face because it looked so much like where we had left things at the end of 2018, and I immediately felt like we were truly back.
Teaming Up: Hamilton Road Productions Takes the Lead CrossFit worked with Hamilton Road Productions and its HRP Live division to produce the five days of live streaming and broadcast coverage, which began yesterday and will culminate Sunday in a two-hour broadcast of the individual finals on CBS. Prior to HRP's arrival in 2019, CrossFit produced the Games internally (although most of the freelancers from those years are still part of the core crew).
HRP Owner/Executive Producer Charlie Dube is a longtime CrossFit Games production veteran, as is Lead Director Mike Rothy Roth, who has worked the CrossFit Games broadcasts since 2011. This week marks the culmination of months of work for HRP, which also produced the CrossFit Games Open and Semifinals, as well as the Miles to Madison behind-the-scenes docuseries.
From left: HRP's Charlie Dube, CrossFit's Joe Novello, and HRP's Mike Rothy Roth
We've had three cracks at this already, since we've been working together on the Open, then the Quarterfinals and Semifinals and now the Games, says Dube, who has been a producer on CrossFit Games since 2013. As a result, the same faces keep showing up at each event, so there's a lot of shared learning across the board.
We're in this for the long-haul, he continues. Our goal is not to build one great show this year - though we obviously want to do that - but rather to build something that is more [sustainable] long term so we don't have to re-create the wheel every year. I think that's going to allow us to react quicker and be more agile when a curve ball is thrown at us, which happens a lot [at CrossFit Games].
This year's broadcast production deploys 36 cameras, including two drones, six robos, six wireless RF cameras, and 13 bonded-cellular systems. Since competition formats change from year to year and always produce surprises, Roth says, it's critical to have a large arsenal of cameras to adjust quickly and capture the action.
NEP rolled out Supershooter 4 A, B, and C units for the 2022 CrossFit Games.
It's a hard sport to cover because you don't know how it's going to play out until you actually see it live. So we have to be absolutely covered, he explains. Things are always changing right up until the start of the Games, so we have to be ready to adapt and have all the necessary equipment to [pivot] at any moment.
One Big Happy Family': Broadcast, Campus Ops on a Single Fiber Backbone NEP Supershooter 4 (A, B, and C units), Supershooter 8, and ST8 are parked in the compound. CP Communications, which is handling all RF and bonded-cellular needs in Madison, is also onsite with a 53-footer. Arctek Satellite Productions will have two C-band satellite trucks (Arctek black and purple) handling the back haul for the CBS broadcast on Sunday.
CrossFit and HRP Live worked closely with NEP's Creative Technologies (CT) division and CP Communications to create a unified fiber backbone to serve both broadcast and on-campus operations across the sprawling Alliant Energy Center campus. For more than a week prior to the start of the Games, the fiber crew was onsite, running hundreds of miles of fiber across the campus, which comprises the NOBULL Coliseum, ROGUE North Park Stadium, and numerous fan-activations and festival-style installations.
Our goal this year was to integrate all of the on-campus and broadcast [infrastructure] under one umbrella, says Roth. In the old days, if we wanted to talk to somebody about the audio level at one of the venues, we had to have someone from our team talk to someone from that team, and it was a huge hassle; now everybody's on the same team. That has allowed us to be a lot more efficient in terms of equipment and manpower and eliminated a lot of the issues we've had in the past. There aren't silos anymore, just one big happy family working together.
The CrossFit Games production is back to 2018 equipment levels and has five NEP mobile units in the compound.
On the audio/comms side, the entire CrossFit Games operation is running on a single Dante-over-MADI IP network for both broadcast and on-campus audio needs.
In addition to the live operation, HRP has rolled out its documentary crew to capture footage for the Miles to Madison series and other original-content efforts. Armed with 10+ RED cinema cameras and a Phantom ultra-high-speed camera, the crew ingests content into a NAS tied directly to the broadcast team'
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CrossFit Games 2022: Production Team Is Once Again Onsite in Full Force Six trucks, a crew of 250, 35+ cameras, and campus-wide fiber are deployed By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor 
