Aerial Camera Systems has its busiest week ever at the 2016 Open Championship which is being held at Royal Troon in Troon, Scotland this weekend. Not only has the company been a key part of a golf broadcast first, the use of a CAMCAT Colibri point-to-point cabled camera system for on-course coverage of the course's signature eighth hole, but it also developed a new railcam system specifically for this event that is being used on eight holes.Five bunker cameras make sure viewers don't miss a swing at the eighth hole.
The showpiece hole for ACS is also the signature hole of the golf course: the par-three eight hole known for its green which is nicknamed the postage stamp for its small size. But the hole is noteworthy not only for the small size of the green but for the fact that it is surrounded by five nasty bunkers, bunkers that are the perfect place for ACS to install five bunker cameras. Two of the bunkers feature cameras that can be panned and tilted by an operator located in an OB unit in the TV compound.
But the big news on the eight hole is the installation of a CAMCAT cable camera system alongside the hole. The unique geographical layout of the short hole nestled alongside the seventh hole allowed for cable camera towers to be installed without impacting play and patrons. The result? A cable camera that can hover about 35 feet above the tee box and then move alongside the fairway and capture shots from above the green.
The CAMCAT system can follow alongside players from the tee to the green.
We've been working with CAMCAT systems for 20 years and they are very reliable and knowledgeable, says Whitlock. We've worked with them on events like Royal Ascot and the Olympics and for something like a horse race you want it to be fast and stabilized to cope with the induced role. But here we wanted something that was quiet and low profile as it needs to make no noise. But it could also be lighter weight as it doesn't need a big lens. We want to be slow, steady, smooth, and quiet.
Whitlock says getting the system in place required a few trips ahead of the event to make sure the towers were the right height and also did not interfere with the grandstands.
It's the shortest hole in Open Championship golf and it really lends itself to a tee-to-green system, says Whitlock. We don't have to go very high with the towers or far with the ropes.
The combination of camera shots from the bunker cameras and the overhead CAMCAT system gives the production team a solid one-to-punch to deliver viewers compelling coverage of dramatic bunker shots from all angles.
You're not limited by the length of a jib arm and you can follow the players as they walk down off the tee box and follow them as they walk up the green and you can cover the whole hole with one camera, says Whitlock.
The railcam on the fifth hole features a Cineflex gyrostabilized system.
The other big news for ACS at the Open are the deployment of nine railcam systems across the course. One system, located along the side of the green on the fifth hole, features a HD Cineflex V14 gyrostabilized pan-and-tilt head to capture great shots looking out across the green to the Atlantic Ocean and the Scottish coastline.
The images are quite stunning and it's quite a short track that is only about eight meters long, says Whitlock. We were worried it wouldn't be long enough but it is as you have the foreground, the bunker, the fairway, and the sea. And having just a little bit of movement makes all the difference. It's slow and subtle and the director loves it.
The eight other railcams are at the back of the tee boxes to capture compelling images from behind the players as they tee off without the need for a cameraman. On the 10th and 11th holes the railcams are fitted with SMARThead remotes and integrated with the Pro Tracer system to make it easier to ensure the Pro Tracer system is in the perfect spot to allow for tee shots to be tracked as they leave the tee box.
What Pro Tracer wants is to be on the side of the player at a bit of an angle and then the ability to move to the other side of the tee box for a lefty golfer and then be able to frame it for slap graphics to slide into the frame, says Whitlock. The railcams are subtle and unobtrusive.
Other holes that feature the railcam include the first, sixth, eighth, 13th, and 17th.
David Whitlock oversees ACS operations at the Open Championship.
Whitlock says the development of the new railcam systems shows the strong Design and Build capabilities that ACS has particularly given that they had to be developed in a pretty short timeframe in parallel with other projects.
We had to build them from scratch as the features were purely client led and we may not have another application beyond golf for the cameras, he explains. They are much more simple than the kind of railcam kit we normally come up with and we were able to get them built in a couple of months.
The rain and wind on Friday put the new cameras to the test and Whitlock says they performed great.
It was impressive and the railcams are low profile and designed to carry a Sony P1 camera and an ENG lens with the ability to hold a Protracer fixed head and move behind the player, he explains.
Earlier this week ACS was also operating a second point-to-point camera system (not a CAMCAT system) at the driving range to capture players warming up on the driving range as well as the putting range. The system had a range of 270 meters and was on air for the Golf Channel and Sky beginning on Monday. Like the CAMCAT system that was on the eighth hole the goal was to have a lightweight system that was quiet and could easily move up and down the long cable run. But early on Friday afternoon one of the four lithium batteries located inside the buggy that rides along the cable
