Roar of the Crowd: Telegenic on Running a Sound Operation for UEFA at Euro 2020

Roar of the crowd: Telegenic on running a sound operation for UEFA at Euro 2020 By Heather McLean, Editor

Thursday, July 8, 2021 - 15:41

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Telegenic's London sound team at Wembley for UEFA Euro 2020

With the final of Euro 2020 now concluded at Wembley, Telegenic, which is providing unilateral and match services for UEFA via HBS for Rome and Italy, worked at maximum capacity to bring both the sights and sounds of this thrilling event to screens across the globe.

In Rome and London, Telegenic provided UEFA with a multilateral truck, a unilateral truck that is also the emergency truck working with the rights-holding broadcasters, including managing audio for eight stand up positions throughout the venue that broadcasters can book, plus a fully equipped dedicated unilateral service (FEDUS) of two additional OB vans.

Also, as there were two back-to-back semi-finals at Wembley on 6 and 7 July, Telegenic provided an additional OB van for the match day minus-one (MD-1) operations.

There's so much resilience built into this [production] from the talkback to the microphones, to having two trucks in terms of UEFA requirements, and then we build our additional layers and protocols on top of that. In the event of an equipment or truck failure scenarios, the audio team know what to do and why in order to keep the show going

Richard Williams, Telegenic deputy head of sound, says: For a normal game this is covered from the multilateral truck but the day before England versus Denmark, we covered the training and press conferences from this van so as to allow the main trucks to concentrate on the Spain versus Italy game.

Parent company EMG provided a fan truck in all Euro 2020 venues to create the pre-match entertainment output for the big screens in-stadium as well as corporate boxes. As part of that contract, Telegenic was also asked to provide fan facilities plus crew in three venues Dublin (subsequently cancelled and staff reallocated), Rome, and Glasgow, where a smaller OB which is normally used for Premier League Productions coverage was used.

Telegenic match supervisor, Scott Camlin, at the Calrec Apollo desk at Wembley for Euro 2020

Evolving plans

In January 2020 the Telegenic audio team had started to pull together their plans for Euro 2020 on spreadsheets. When the pandemic hit and the Euros were cancelled, everything for this tournament got pushed onto a back burner while we dealt with other contracts last year, says David Latham, Telegenic senior sound guarantee.

Adds Williams: So it feels like this has been like 18 months in the making!

Speaking to SVG Europe, Latham notes: In terms of the technical side of things, we were virtually there in planning this and as we got to March last year we were just ramping up everything. For HBS, it's roughly the same plan [this year] as the 2018 World Cup; the feeds that leave the truck are the same. It's a big audio template that they just kind of shift on from event to event. So in terms of planning, we kind of took what we did in 2018, and took a little bit of what we did in 2019 at the Women's World Cup.

But coming back [to it in 2021] there's been a lot of logistics we've had to sort out, like hundreds and hundreds of ear pieces and other things to make the event COVID-safe, and other things that took up a disproportionate amount of our time with the planning. Otherwise, the main plan didn't change an awful lot from March 2020.

Telegenic's David (Frank) Latham and Richard Williams, seen here at the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup

Keeping video and audio tight

Williams tells SVG Europe about the challenges for the host broadcast audio set up in London and Rome: Some of the biggest changes have actually been on the video side of the production as the feeds are now produced in a variety of formats including UHD and HDR. This has meant a closer integration between the multilateral and unilateral/emergency trucks in terms of intercom. We connect the two intercom frames to make one integrated frame, which is a regular occurrence for us during the regular season, but a first on the Euros. This means (as cameras are split across the two trucks,) that camera switching between the match director, tactical director and ceremonies director is seamless.

He goes on: The number of video formats has increased considerably [at this year's Euros]. A few years ago everything was 1080i25 and now the vision mixer runs in three levels: 1080p50 SDR, 1080p50 HDR and UHD HDR (HLG). In addition we distribute a number of feeds in 1080i25. It's a different format of HDR to what we do on a weekly basis for BT Sport and for UEFA Champions League and Europa Leagues.

We capture in UHD HDR SLOG and broadcast in UHD HDR PQ for BT Sport; Richard Delaney our deputy head of vision at Wembley, and Patrick Harvey, one of our senior video engineers in Rome, have masterminded this multi-layered video operation on our behalf.

UEFA is capturing the audio on site via the Telegenic truck in 5.1.4. Says Williams: We mix it on site in 5.1, then we send a lot of these mics and submixes to the IBC [where an] immersive mix is made, which goes with the UHD HDR pictures.

There are five match feeds, four team or player-specific feeds, and lots of individual cameras, most of which have individual mixes or discrete audio on them, Williams continues. We create TVIS TV International Sound in Stereo and 5.1, RIS Radio International Sound in Stereo a commentary mix on the Calrec Apollo and the tactical mix on the Calrec Brio, in addition to a number of other mixes. Everything leaves discrete and embedded apart from the satellite world feed, which is the only circuit to contain Dolby E.

Telegenic A2, Dominic Guest, using percussion to measure delays between mics at Wembley in the run up to Euro 20

LINK:	https://www.svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/roar-of-the-crowd-telegenic-o...
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