Isle of Man TT: Inside Greenlight Productions' plan for ever-more cameras in this spectacle of a Manx racing event By Heather McLean Friday, May 23, 2025 - 13:05
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Greenlight Productions is running the host broadcast once again for the Isle of Man TT 2025
The Isle of Man TT also known as the Tourist Trophy races is an annual motorcycle racing event run on the Isle of Man from late May to early June, ever since the inaugural race in 1907.
This year, the race event begins on the UK Spring Bank Holiday on 26 May and runs for thirteen days to 7 June. Billed as one of the most dangerous racing events in the world, once again, Greenlight Productions is running the host broadcast, bringing images of bikes slicing through the Manx countryside at speeds of up to 200 miles per hour.
Greenlight Productions got its initial contract to film the Isle of Man TT for the Isle of Man government in 1995, which is the event organiser for the race. It did so until 2008, when the contract went to a different supplier. However, in 2018 the contract for the race came back to Greenlight and it has stayed with the company ever since.
2022 was the first time Greenlight Productions went live with the dangerous race, with that coverage going out to the organiser's own over the top (OTT) platform, TT Live Pass. Comments Aisling Ridout, production manager at Greenlight Productions: We went live for the first time ever in 2022, which was very exciting; also very nerve wracking, and very stressful. A stressful couple of weeks to be honest. But it all worked. We had a few niggles in the first year, but I think that was to be expected.
It is quite challenging because we were live for the first time ever, and we were live straight away with the first qualifying session live to the public; there was no shakedown event, there was no sort of practise event. It was hit the big red button and that's it, off we go.
Greenlight Productions' Ridout says: We have two galleries in operation; a main gallery which follows the start of the race, and then we have a sub gallery, which is constantly cutting up bikes a bit further down the line
Hit the big red button
Most of the kit for the race is owned by Greenlight already and shipped to the island from its Manchester base, although some cameras, such as those from Arri, are hired in. The production is managed from Greenlight's own Isle of Man base, which is just 1.5 miles from the race grandstand.
Says Ridout on the workflow: We have two galleries in operation; a main gallery which follows the start of the race, and then we have a sub gallery, which is constantly cutting up bikes a bit further down the line, because over the six laps of racing, the gaps on the road can massively eek out across the story of the race, so we've always got something that we can cut to.
Each gallery has its own director and content from all the camera locations around the track goes back to the galleries over ethernet using a Mobile Viewpoint system.
The event itself is a substantial one that takes plenty of planning in order to produce, and the production has evolved in scope and complexity since it first went live. Says Ridout: There's a week of qualifying with five qualifying sessions, and then there's a week of racing. We were live across the board for all of that in 2022.
In 2023, it was pretty much quite similar to 2022. Last year we added extra cameras to the production, and then this year we've added extra cameras again, she notes. We've got 30 cameras deployed around the course for this year. That includes two aerial cameras, two helicopters, and we are using Shotover F1 cameras for those.
Those cameras in the sky are a key element of the coverage. The course is 37 and three quarter miles long, so it's a huge landscape to fill and to cover, Ridout says. We use the aerial cameras as the backbone of the production because at the moment it's impossible from a budget point of view to deploy cameras at every single corner around the course. In 2022 we concentrated really on the main six key timing points around the course, so we had clusters of cameras around those.
Now, that's expanded a bit more, she continues. For this year we're in a few more new locations, but that brings its own challenges in itself because again, it's public roads, you're dealing with homeowners and landowners, she laughs, adding, We have to ask, can we pop a camera tower in your garden for three and a half weeks? That can have its own unique challenges really!
Greenlight Productions crew hard at work at the 2024 Isle of Man TT in the winner's enclosure
Spectacle of an event
On those camera location and how the team work with the director and vision mixer to not give them a headache, Ridout says: We've got RF cameras based around the grandstand area, which is a start and finish area where the grid and the paddock and all that kind of stuff is.
We've also got a bespoke-built studio on site, which sits right in the middle of the fan park, so there's people all milling around and that's the anchor for the live coverage. Then off around the course we've got various effects cameras, such as curb cams to give a great view of just how fast these guys are going past.
The cameras around the course tend to be clustered in twos or threes, because these bikes are travelling pretty fast, so from the [point of view of the] sanity of our director and our vision mixer, to give them some help to get through the corners .
She continues: There are some cameras out there on their own as well. And we've got a couple of Amira cameras [from Arri] out there as well doing slowmos, which we then play back into the gallery for analysis by the commentators or inclusion in music highlights, and that k
