Live From Paris 2024: OBS CEO Yiannis Exarchos on How Tech, Digital Make Olympic Storytelling Better Than Ever It's all about capturing those special moments - athletic and emotional By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director Tuesday, August 6, 2024 - 3:25 am
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The Paris Olympics are in their second week, and SVG was able to sit down with OBS CEO Yiannis Exarchos and reflect on the effort to get the Games going, the innovations, the changes in storytelling, the challenges around gender equality, and much more. Below is the interview, which was conducted on Monday, Aug. 5.
Into Week 2, what is your impression of how things have gone so far here in Paris?
My impressions are very good because, first of all, we see the impact of the Games and the reception of the Games worldwide. That's the most important thing. We see record viewership around the world, and this is everywhere. It's not just in Europe - obviously, you would expect that with the time zone - but in the U.S. and Canada and Brazili. And in Asia, we are seeing similar ratings to what they had in Tokyo.
OBS's Yiannis Exarchos: I think that, deep down, everybody around the world is trying to make an emotional statement that we still can live together. The best platform for that is the Olympic Games and the best athletes in the world.
It's very, very clear that these Games register as extremely successful Games. From a media point of view, there are many reasons for that. First of all, I think that the vision that France had for these Games was amazing. I was one of the big supporters of this vision of bringing the Games into the city. This is an incredible city also from a point of view of using it as a vector for sports. Having the Opening Ceremony right in the heart of the city, bringing urban sports in Place de la Concorde, and other things, I think, has created an infectious atmosphere around the city, especially after two Games which took place during the pandemic.
Here, it's very clear that people want to overdo it on the side of having a great time and having a true festival of sports. I also think that, precisely because the world has entered a phase of some new concerns and new conflicts and new divisions, deep down, everybody around the world is trying to make an emotional statement that we still can live together. The best platform for that is the Olympic Games and the best athletes in the world.
The good thing, I feel, is that we were very prepared at OBS and the broadcasters to capture that.
How have you done that?
The way we do it is, of course, based on the tradition of trying to create the best possible coverage for the sports. But I think that we went the extra mile in trying to convey the emotions of the Games and what is different in our times. I think we are lucky because now we have technologies that can help us a lot in trying to do that. And we use those technologies not to showcase technology but to use the tools to tell the story in a more compelling and more exciting way.
How are things different from previous Games from that standpoint?
First of all, the sheer size and diversity of the content we produce. We are producing here in Paris 11,000 hours of content, and about 3,800 of those are competitions. We produce all of that extra content in recognition of the fact that content today is consumed in different ways by different people or different ways even by the same people in different moments in their daily life. What we wanted to ensure is that people around the world are enveloped by the Olympic reality throughout their 24 hours, whether they go to work in the morning and look at their mobile phone, whether they're in the office and pretend that they're working and watch on their laptop. or when they go back home and have a more relaxing time and watch on a big screen. We wanted the Games to be present everywhere but with the narrative that fits each specific way of distributing, whether it's streaming, whether it's mobile, whether it's social, and so on.
Also, we're doing much more production which provides more access to the athletes and their emotions, and we produce more content behind the scenes, the preparation of the athletes, and the reactions among the athletes themselves when they warm up, when they train. And all that is facilitated by technology as we have cameras which are not so intrusive, and reliable, 5G transmissions.
We also wanted a beautiful, photogenic background, so we decided to push very much the envelope in using cinematic lenses as television lenses, and film lenses have started to merge. Because of that, we have an opportunity to use narrative techniques that filmmakers traditionally use. Some of them have a lot to do with expressing better the emotions, the way you film humans against the background, and so on.
The spectators came in the millions, and their interaction with the athletes is incredible. When you capture that with these lenses,the production moves beyond the traditional coverage of sports. We've been working with different facets of AI for things that go both in front of the camera and behind, as well as for things like 360 replays that have not happened in most sports. But now the quality of the 360 images is compatible with UHD HDR coverage, and that is not easy to achieve. Most important, the turnaround times allow the directors to use the 360 replays as a third replay during the live cut. Or they can use the stroboscopic enhancements, especially in sports like diving and gymnastics, where the movements of the human body are incredible, to help people really see what is happening.
I'm assuming you watched the men's 100 meters the other night. To me, that seemed like a perfect example of what you are talking about. given the way that race ended with such a close
