Breaking the lines: Sky Sports unveils mixed reality presentation studio for Monday Night Football and US Open tennis coverage By Will Strauss
Monday, August 14, 2023 - 09:00
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Sky Sports has converted two studio spaces at its Osterley campus in West London into a single flexible-use mixed-reality presentation studio that will be used for its flagship Monday Night Football (MNF) show as well as 2023 US Open tennis coverage and, in the future, other sports output.
The studio, which was designed and engineered in-house, includes four distinct physical spaces, an extensive LED floor and LED walls, AR and VR capabilities, and a BatCam wire cam system.
Take a visual walk through the new studio
It will be used in anger for the first time during MNF on 14 August with pundits Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville doing pre-match, half-time, and post-match analysis of Manchester United vs Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Later this month, it will be the presentation hub for coverage of the early rounds of the US Open tennis.
During a studio tour ahead of the launch, Sky Sports director of creative output Ben Wickham told SVG Europe that the 18-month long project and the multi-million-pound investment gives the broadcaster a very flexible, well-specced space that brings us closer to the viewer.
The new studio allows us to quickly bring a level of analysis, detail, and access to the game that viewers have never seen before.
We can pull the studio apart and put it back together in an almost infinite number of ways, he said. We can move the totems around. We can move the light fittings around. We can light different areas. We can move the AR. We can put graphics or creative in the middle of the floor. We have a wire cam that can capture that in a very different way. We have a much larger space for AR. We can move through the studio. We have a real ability to get up and walk around the AR and use it for creative or use it for data and tech. We've got very large high res LED panels that we can use to show creative or graphics.
We have different aspect ratios too, he continued There is 16:9 for a live shot, and a wide aspect ratio that can have multiple things on it, even a big vista. You can use those spaces differently. There are some portrait-shaped spaces too for things like hero photography. It's flexible in a way that I don't think we have ever built studios before.
Ben Wickham: I want the teams to feel empowered to create great sports TV programmes
The studio also has an AR extension behind the camera that Sky Sports is calling the fourth wall'.
This means we can now spin the camera around and shoot back at the viewer. This is an entirely virtual space so we can include anything our heart desires. All of these things together means there is no story that we cannot tell or we haven't got the technology for.
For MNF specifically, the studio install is a real advance, for both the viewers and the pundits.
It allows us to bring a bit more of Gary and Jamie into the studio, he said, revealing that a movement coach has been brought in to help the talent make the best of the space that is now available to them.
They can get up and they can move and be physical. They are sportsmen. We want to reflect a bit of that and make it feel joyful and fun. In terms of punditry, they can actually react in a space that has a bit more depth and width and be physical with the analysis.
We have also hugely upgraded our capability for touchscreen analysis and telestration which allows us to replay parts of the game in a virtual space which in turn allows us to put a camera wherever we want in order to understand plays better, to retrospectively move players around to see how things might have been done differently.
The pundits have complete access to that so that they can deliver a theoretical this is what could have happened', or this is what it would have looked like if you were standing in a different place'.
It allows us to quickly bring a level of analysis, detail, and access to the game that viewers have never seen before.
The Technology Studio
Five Grass Valley LDX 86n cameras upgraded with integrated Mo-Sys StarTrackers
All the systems are connected to the Sky Studios' IP core, allowing flexibility to utilise all control rooms depending on the production and the ability to expand and evolve the platform
The LED is supplied by Roe. The main walls are from the Ruby range using 1.9mm and 2.3mm ties. The floor is Black Marble, similar to the type of floor used in major Light Entertainment shows, but with a matt finish for TV studio use
The walls are driven by Helios Megapixel processing that supports Ghostframe
A 4-point wire camera supplied as a custom unit by BATCAM with a Grass Valley camera and Mo-Sys tracker
Touchscreens with Piero, controlled by Unity
Lighting
All fixtures are either Robe or Arri, all with a CRI of 95+ giving full-colour temp control and colour. No gels are used, reducing single-use plastic
Lighting control is from Sacn to each fixture giving us complete control and feedback during usage
Control is via two ETC Apex 10s with Swisson Network switches, nodes and buffers.
All lighting is LED
Sky director of group production engineering Kevin McCue, discussing the technology choices for the studio, explained that the number of suppliers has been kept deliberately low.
That is generally a bit of a strategy that we are taking more broadly within Sky, he said. Purely because you can end up splitting your engineering competency over so many different vendors and products you can become a jack of all trades, master of none.'
The engineering design [for the studio] had some core architectural principles, he continued. Experience has taught us a lot of things about the way we evolve technology. We try
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Breaking the lines: Sky Sports unveils mixed reality presentation studio for Monday Night Football and US Open tennis coverage By Will Strauss 
