Live From Super Bowl LVI: Van Wagner Designs Robust Hybrid Workflow for First In-Venue Show at SoFi Stadium A 10G pipeline will connect remote editors to the onsite control room By Kristian Hern ndez, Associate Editor
Friday, February 11, 2022 - 1:39 pm
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After 54 straight years without a team playing in a home championship game, Super Bowl LVI in Los Angeles will be the second consecutive season with exactly that. SoFi Stadium is the Rams' house, but, with Van Wagner Sports & Entertainment (VWSE) managing the in-person atmosphere, it will be serving Cincinnati Bengals fans as well. Displaying this particular event on SoFi's videoboard brings a unique set of challenges.
This is our Super Bowl crew's first event in this building, says Bob Becker, president, productions, VWSE Productions. We'll be rebuilding the entire show to make it our own, so fans that are used to attending games at SoFi Stadium will see a completely different videoboard show.
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Mixed Method: THUMBWAR Helps Build Synchronized Production Model Located inside one of the National Football League's newest stadiums, the production staff will be dealing with an unfamiliar centerhung videoboard this Sunday. Unlike any other LED display in professional or collegiate sports, the Infinity Screen by Samsung presents a challenge that is disrupting the typical workflows of VWSE's creative individuals. Because of its size, rendering any large-scale takeover graphic takes a long time: for example, completing 50 seconds of video of that magnitude takes a full 12 hours. Nearly a half day dedicated to rendering means that any mistake, big or small, is amplified - resulting in deadlines being shifted and the possibility of rehearsals being reduced.
Inside the control room at SoFi Stadium
Without a doubt, this venue has been the most challenging project we've been fortune enough to work on, says Ryan Kehn, creative director, VWSE Productions. From the dual-sided, 360-degree video screens to five levels of asymmetric ribbon boards to 4K resolution at 60 frames per second, this building has stretched every bit of our creative and technical capacity. Finding ways to make the most out of this LED real estate for unique visuals without burying ourselves in render times took a lot of foresight and planning.
This turnaround time is a massive undertaking to manage, and adding to Van Wagner's plate is the fact that a handful of editors continue to work onsite. Luckily, through an ongoing working relationship with THUMBWAR, they were able to assemble an efficient hybrid model ahead of time for one of the largest crews for an in-venue show at a Super Bowl. This includes instruction of 17 designers, editors, and loggers who are critical to the show's preparation.
Because of the scale and scope of the files we're dealing with, says Kehn, we set up workstations onsite at SoFi a week earlier than usual. Our creative team remoted in advance of our travel to work off high-speed, onsite servers to collaborate more effectively and save on transfer times. We maintained a handful of remote editors throughout the onsite preproduction as well as a team of five loggers from our Studio City office that were working off of on-prem virtual machines.
The decision to keep remote editors on the West Coast and within the city limits will provide a major advantage on Sunday. Rather than having to rely on a long-haul connection for staffers tapping in from across the country, the NFL is supplying a 10G pipeline of connectivity.
VWSE's Nate McCoart (left) and Bob Becker are two of the 75-person production team.
It wasn't efficient to bounce [the files] up to the internet, put them in cloud storage, and download them back to the venue, says Nate McCoart, director, technical operations, VWSE Productions. Keeping everything on a local level, we're able to leverage faster connectivity speeds between storage and the final machine that it's playing out to.
Backed by the Best: The Nuts and Bolts of In-Venue Technology After developing this operational foundation, the onsite team will have ready access to a wealth of high-powered technology: 21 in-venue feeds, including six main cameras (high end zone, two low end zones, two in the slash position, and two RF handhelds in the lower bowl); two onfield RF Steadicams for the pregame show featuring NFL Network's Scott Hanson, New Orleans Saints defensive end Cam Jordan, and Los Angeles Chargers team reporter Hayley Elwood; and a shallow-depth-of-field camera featuring a Canon EOS C500 on a M VI rig dubbed Sexy Cam.
Inside the control room, the onsite team will rely on a technological backbone comprising Ross Video equipment and solutions. The game-day toolbox will feature two hyperconverged Ultrix Acuity prod
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Live From Super Bowl LVI: Van Wagner Designs Robust Hybrid Workflow for First In-Venue Show at SoFi Stadium A 10G pipeline will connect remote editors to the onsite control room By Kristian Hern ndez, Associate Editor 
