Race Plan: FilmNova Brings Drones and IP to The Boat Race with EMG

Race plan: FilmNova brings drones and IP to The Boat Race with EMG By Heather McLean

Thursday, March 30, 2023 - 12:52

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A hugely experienced presentation line up for the 2023 Boat Race included Clare Balding

With 194 years of rivalry and counting, The Boat Race where students from Oxford and Cambridge Universities pit themselves against each other on the Thames has become synonymous with British tradition and excellence.

The 77th Women's Boat Race and 168th Men's Boat Race took place on 26 March 2023 on the Thames, with FilmNova working with both EMG and Timeline TV to bring all the thrills and spills to viewers on BBC One, The Boat Race's own YouTube channel, and over 200 rights holders via the world feed.

Phil Sibson, FilmNova managing director and executive producer of the Boat Race, comments: We do the BBC's domestic coverage, including the race, and then we do a separate international feed that we produce as well, which was done remotely from Ealing. So we're doing both sides of it. We're the production partner of the BBC, so the technical aspect is contracted directly by the BBC, although we were involved in the tender process for the reappointment of EMG.

You can't try and be too clever. You have to tell the story of what's happening out there

While EMG covers all on site technicalities, at Timeline TV in Ealing FilmNova had a producer, a continuity announcer and an EVS operator working on the world feed. That world feed was distributed to over 200 countries.

On how FilmNova came to work on the Boat Race, Sibson says: Last year the BBC decided that they were going to put out production for the Boat Race to an independent. And we won a competitive tender in December 2021, so we didn't have that long a buildup to the 2022 race.

But we did last year's and then because we did a good job of it, the BBC asked us back to do this year, and we should be carrying on for the next two years as well.

Race plan

Matthew Coliandris, FilmNova's race director, comments on the plan for the race: The BBC let us get on with it for the most part. Don't forget, we're inheriting something which has been in place for a very, very long time. So to a certain extent last year we didn't want to mess with that plan too much because that would've just been fool-hearted to come on board at the start of January for something that's happening at the start of April and say, well let's move all these cameras around then .

So for the most part we stuck with the plan as was last year. But having done it last year, we thought that there were ways to streamline the coverage and make it more efficient, so we put most of those in place this year.

The Cambridge boat had a problem with its rudder. The drone was obviously right over the top of them at that stage, so we were able to show those live pictures of them having their rudder readjusted. And probably if it wasn't for that shot, we probably wouldn't have known about it

The biggest difference implemented is that previously, the race was completed with two OB trucks one at the start in Putney and one at the end in Mortlake each with separate crews, including directors. Thanks to EMG bringing in IP connectivity, the race was managed from the main truck at the start of the race for the first time this year, while an OB was in place at the end of the race as part of the disaster recovery plan.

Comments Coliandris: We've now pulled all that control back so that Putney the start OB and the main race OB does the entire event. The entire race is now directed from Putney and all the press elements are also directed from Putney as well. So we still have an OB at Mortlake because it's able, should there be catastrophic failure at Putney in terms of broadcast, to still put the broadcast to air; it can receive a certain amount of our cameras.

He adds: Part of the reason why this has never happened before is because the technology's never existed before, to be able to get all those cameras back from the finish.

Sibson says of the technology being used: So we're now using dark fibre; it's an IP mesh that EMG is using. Previously it was done through street access lease lines. So whereas they didn't have capacities bring all the cameras back to Putney previously, they can now bring them all back and vice versa; if anything went down at Putney, they've got cameras at Mortlake that would allow them to do the same.

Camera plans

The FilmNova team delivered a highly complex OB involving 31 cameras across the 4.2 mile course. The camera spec included use of a helicopter, two drones - one for the race and one for the warm up and live feeds from minicams showing the cox and stroke athletes on each of the Oxford and Cambridge boats as they raced.

The camera plan is quite complex for this very fast race. Coliandris says: We try and build a plan whereby we bring those cameras into coverage in conjunction with the mobile cameras we've got; the cameras on the water and the aerial cameras. We draw up a flight plan for the helicopter, for instance, which puts him in a certain position at a certain time, which coincides very nicely to the next camera we're going to on the land and vice versa, so we never have a clash. We never have a position where a set of boats are going from left to right, and then the next thing you know they're going from right to left.

We do the same with the drones; we give them moves. We just don't want them to follow two boats, two crews down the course. We just want to be moving them around, we want them to be in front, behind, left, right. So quite a lot of planning goes into putting that together for two of what are our most dynamic cameras.

On the drones, Sibson comments: Last yea

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