C3Studios Gives High School Students in Texas a Taste of Pro-Level Production at CCSID Challenger Columbia Stadium The five-year-old venue hosts the district's five football programs By Kristian Hernandez, Associate Editor
Thursday, June 24, 2021 - 7:00 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
High school athletics, especially football, are a totally different breed in Texas. With more than a thousand institutions competing for a championship, sports facilities in the Lone Star State rival some of the most technologically advanced in the country. In the Clear Creek Independent School District (CCISD), about 25 minutes outside Houston, C3Studios enlists the area's top AV students to drive live event production at Challenger Columbia Stadium and surrounding venues.
We built this stadium and control room [in 2016] to give these kids an opportunity to be hands-on, says Amber Pecsenye, program director, C3Studios. I think the student interest has grown a lot, and the quality of kids that we're getting is amazing.
Humble Beginnings: Basic Equipment To Teach Fundamentals Inside the C3Studios control room at Challenger Columbia Stadium
Now a formidable force in the Texas high school system, C3Studios developed gradually over the past five years. Starting as a teacher in the district in 2010, Pecsenye had a background in production for local professional teams, such as the MLB's Astros, NFL's Texans, and MLS's Dynamo. After receiving the green light in 2013, the program reached out to BTS Houston, the company responsible for technological integration of control rooms for the Houston Rockets and other high-profile organizations. To start, the budget called for basic equipment that could teach students the fundamentals.
This was the first time [BTS Houston] had ever done a high school control room, Pecsenye says. We first had a NewTek 3Play, but we have definitely raised the bar and built this out.
As the program evolved, so did the structure of its staff. Since this facility is run by a district and not a single school, the interviewing and hiring process is quite extensive for a high school-run production. Working from teacher recommendations, stellar examples of work done in the classroom, and a submitted application, Pecsenye and her team choose the best 10-20 students. On any given show, 13 spots are filled from among those chosen. And, because the program is not considered part of an educational curriculum, the students selected are considered paid employees, their wages coming from marketing revenue for football broadcasts.
They apply as first-year AV students from our five high school programs, Pecsenye explains. Then we get everyone together for a preseason scrimmage. This year, we hosted a flag-football charity event to give them some training.
Behind the Control-Room Door: Sony, Ross Video Gear C3Studios' Amber Pecsenye (left) and Harry So (center) pose with their team of students.
Five schools - Clear Creek, Clear Brook, Clear Lake, Clear Springs, and Clear Falls - call Challenger Columbia Stadium their football home, and C3Studios covers some of the state's biggest high school bouts with high-end equipment and workflows.
At the heart of the SDI-based control room is Ross Video's Carbonite production switcher with ProPresenter software. An upgrade this past season added an Evertz DreamCatcher replay server. On the field, the live stream is anchored by Sony PXW-X320CE cameras (two high, one end zone, one wireless). A handful of Teradek Bolt transmitters send the signals to the production department up top. Although football is king, other live-streamed events are produced by all five schools: track and field, graduations, band performances, and even the opportunity to work with NASA's Space X Initiative.
Harry So (right) instructs a handheld-camera operator during a game.
With this much success, C3Studios has expanded and established the C3 Mobile team to handle events outside of Challenger Columbia Stadium. As one of its main locations, from January to June, the new crew handled 15 events taking place at the nearby Robotics Event Center. Centered on competitive robotics, action at this venue is captured via six Marshall PTZ cameras per playing surface in a makeshift gymnasium. All the cameras can be operated by a single individual, but the department is upping the ante by pushing out three simultaneous live streams of the matches with a crew of 24 students.
We worked with BTS again [for that venue], says Pecsenye. We went to Blackmagic [Design] for our router and have two wireless cameras with that setup for a smaller footprint.
Gameday Experience: Videoboard Show, Live Stream in Educational Environment The C3Studios crew works with a Ross Video Carbonite production switcher.
The students involved in C3Studios practice their skills in a fast-paced setting. Along with Pecsenye, Assistant Director Harry So runs the show from field level. Besides making sure that the technology, especially the Teradek transmitters, are working properly, he's responsible for providing feedback and positive teaching moments for the students. In this unique setting, these adolescents are asked to adapt on the fly and learn from miscues as they go.
There are some mistakes that happen, says So, so we tell the kids that it's okay to mess up but to try to not make that same mistake again. I'm really looking for attitude: who can be a hard worker? Are they able to pick up things fast, take criticism, and learn from it? This is a high-pace and stressful environment.
The crews are at the reins of the digital live stream, but there's an additional production layer at Challenger Columbia Stadium: the in-venue videoboard show. The staff pushes visual content to a 34- by 19-ft. main videoboard in the back of one en
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
C3Studios Gives High School Students in Texas a Taste of Pro-Level Production at CCSID Challenger Columbia Stadium The five-year-old venue hosts the district's five football programs By Kristian Hernandez, Associate Editor 
