NCAA Women's Final Four: RailCam, Aerial SupraCam Add Glitz to Star-Powered Weekend in San Antonio Kerry Callahan is first woman to sit in producer's chair for Women's Basketball Championship By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Friday, April 2, 2021 - 10:40 am
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This year's NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament has had a certain juice to it.
Whether you chalk it up to the star power, the controversial endings, the sheer impact of female athletes fearlessly raising their voices against inequality, or some combination of it all, there's little denying that this year's Women's side of March Madness has caught the attention of the sports world.
For someone who has worked on this event for a long time, it's a dream come true.
The NCAA Women's Basketball Final Four tips off tonight at the Alamodome in San Antonio. New to ESPN's coverage this weekend is use of a SupraCam aerial camera system. (All photos courtesy Pat Lowry, ESPN)
I've worked on this tournament for years, and it has always been my dream job, says ESPN Coordinating Producer Pat Lowry, a veteran of ESPN since 2002. This year has felt extra special because it feels like more people are taking it in, appreciating it, and seeing the level of play from the incredible student athletes. The extra coverage has been fantastic; the games have been fantastic. For somebody who has worked on it for this long, to see it get its due has been awesome.
Now it's time for the grand finale, and, despite COVID protocols and new safety-driven workflows, it's an impressive onsite effort at San Antonio's Alamodome as ESPN gives this exciting tournament a proper sendoff.
The Final Four tips off on ESPN tonight at 6 p.m. ET with No. 1 South Carolina vs. No. 1 Stanford and then No. 3 Arizona vs. No. 1 UConn at 9:30 p.m. The National Championship Game will air live on ESPN on Sunday at 6 p.m.
Onsite at the Alamodome, ESPN has more than 120 staffers, all five trucks of the network's NEP EN1 mobile production unit, more than 20 cameras, an indoor aerial-camera system, a modified animations package, and a bevy of other extras to help bring added dimension to this championship event.
RailCam Gets Early-Round Reps; SupraCam Joins for the Finale One of the most notable silver linings in the bubble execution of this year's tournament was that games were played at the Final Four venue from the first round. That meant that ESPN was able to set up more production enhancements earlier and use them on more games, rather than wait to deploy them only for the tournament's final weekend.
The most prominent example of that has been the use of a RailCam, which has been in position and shooting games on one of the Alamodome's two courts since the Sweet 16. Getting the RailCam into the mix early has proved beneficial, allowing director Jimmy Platt (who also directs Monday Night Football for ESPN) more reps with the angle to build comfort with it.
NEP's EN1 production truck is onsite. Inside, the producer/director team of Kerry Callahan (left) and Jimmy Platt get rehearsals at the front bench.
The RailCam has been a great addition, says Lowry, We wanted Jimmy to have time to get in a good cadence with that camera in the complement. Anytime you add something like that, you don't want to overdo it, but you want to take advantage of it. He has had the opportunity to use it on three games before getting into the Final Four, which we felt was important.
Lowry also notes that the production team has been pleased with both the camera's height and its positioning to the court. Social distancing and the limited number of fans in attendance helped give ESPN greater flexibility in deploying the complex system. When ESPN used a similar system in the NBA bubble last summer, it sat much higher off the court. Here, the women's hoops crew has achieved the much lower look desired.
This was the look we wanted to get from it, Lowry explains. We don't have any handheld cameras, [but] we're getting the center-handheld look we used to get and more from the RailCam.
New for the Final Four and the Championship Game is an aerial-camera system supplied by Oklahoma-based SupraCam. ESPN has deployed the company's aerial unit for the past two Final Fours.
Other camera highlights include a pair of super-slo-mos at the slash positions, four Fletchers (above and below each rim), PTZs mounted in the hallways leading from the floor to the locker rooms, and eight Marshall cameras strategically placed around the building for various scenic shots.
Studio in Bristol Reduces Alamodome Footprint A major onsite absence this year is the studio show, which ESPN elected to keep back home in Bristol, CT. It's a sacrifice that the team wasn't happy to have to make, but it helped minimize the crew's footprint onsite while allowing the group working on that end of the production to spread their wings and take advantage of the resources in Bristol.
Coordinating Producer, Special Events, Kate Jackson and Director Josslyn Myers have done just that, pulling out everything from virtual graphics to lighting the exterior of the ESPN campus and using drones to capture the sites of the iconic Bristol facility.
We wanted to give this that big important feel that we weren't able to do because we didn't have studio onsite, says Lowry. What they have done in studio has been an incredible accomplishment.
History in the Producer's Chair Kerry Callahan is the first woman to sit in the producer's chair for the NCAA Women's Basketball Championship since ESPN began broadcasting it in 1995.
Among all the technology and on-the-court hype, this year's Women's Final Four is also witnessing a notable milestone at the f
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NCAA Women's Final Four: RailCam, Aerial SupraCam Add Glitz to Star-Powered Weekend in San Antonio Kerry Callahan is first woman to sit in producer's chair for Women's Basketball Championship By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital 
