Moving past lockdown in Italy: Views of OB service providers (Part 1) SVG Europe speaks to Cinevideo, Global Production, Opera BVS and Videe By Roberto Landini, Italian Correspondent Monday, May 18, 2020 - 16:43
Print This Story
TV shooting in the entertainment and sports areas has closed in on itself in recent years, producing, in practice, a certain concentration of forces in the hands of a few highly specialised production companies in Italy.
In addition to contracting in number, the production service providers who physically carry out the filming of sporting events from venues in these months of widespread pandemic and due to the cancellation of live matches have suffered greatly, while preparing themselves as best possible for the much anticipated re-start'.
Everyone has invested this time of immobility triggering technical updates, focusing on staff training in the IP domain and adopting interpersonal distance and minimum hygienic safeguards such as masks, gloves, gels disinfectants and repeated temperature controls.
In addition, everyone certainly in full cooperation with producers, sports rights holders and broadcasters has tried to create a network' and implement adequate plans to adapt to the safety regulations imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, each has also implemented unilateral resolutions in order to begin planning a new future' or next future', aware that the imperative is first and foremost a greater attention to safety and the protection of everyone's health and that sport especially football is the global economic driving force that can no longer stand still.
SVG Europe asked some companies specialised in television services, throughout Italy namely Cinevideo of Pescara, Abruzzo, Opera BVS of Foggia in Puglia, Videe spa, of Pordenone, Friuli and Global Production Srl of Turin, Piedmont to take stock of the situation. In this first part we get the opinions of Cinevideo and L'Opera Broadcast Video Service Broadcasting.
Cinevideo (Abruzzo): Waiting for good news
By working on Serie A with two fixed pitches, namely Parma and Ferrara with Spal, we cover the production of these events with our flagship mobile vehicle Dolphin 7.0, said Andrea Buonomo, Cinevideo executive sales manager.
In addition, on Serie A we usually provide all Hypermotion services up to 2000 fps, even for the highest match standards. The last match was on 8 March with Juve-Inter in Turin, where we provided two Hypermotion systems.
Andrea Buonomo, Cinevideo executive sales manager
Then we stopped for the suspension of the championship and without live events we suffered a lot, but so far we have managed to guarantee a minimum coverage for RAI locally on the news in Abruzzo, Marche and Molise areas, with ENG crews, backpacks and streaming systems, said Buonomo.
Like everyone else, we are on high alert waiting for the official announcement of the re-launch of football, but news about it is still missing. At the moment the individual training has started and then it will be the turn of team training.
Together with two of the major national broadcasters and the largest holder of Italian sports rights we have considered that the Dolphin, which on board allows 35 zones in normal operation, in this emergency situation and trying to maximise the space between operators it is able to house 19 operating zones, also installing plexiglass barriers, as additional safety for staff.
In practice, being an ISO9001 certified company we have done nothing but increase the frequency of the usual maintenance operations to which we add the sanitisation of the air conditioning filters before and after each event, he said.
Some laser thermometers will already be in operation at the entrance of the stadiums, but we will perform a double check alongside the official ones. In the typical configuration B or C, required for the standard shooting of some matches in Serie A, in addition to the staff of the Lega Calcio (production manager, director and assistant director), within our host OB van we will supply a video mixer operator, five RVM technicians, a sound engineer, three camera controls and a technical manager. The number of cameras engaged will be 11 or 12 plus a Steadicam (one Supermotion in standard B and two in standard C).
In conditions of normal operation, integration with the unilateral personalised feed is usually carried out within the same mobile van, while at this time of post Coronavirus recovery, another separate mobile vehicle will be used for this purpose, which houses five to six people, said Buonomo.
Opera Broadcasting (Puglia): Preparing, but safely
Live events were stopped but we certainly are not, said Michele Infante, CEO, owner and founding partner with seven other professionals of Opera Broadcast Services. We stopped on 15 March, the date on which we shot the last match behind closed doors in Florence.
We usually deal with three or four sports productions football, basketball, motoring and many business conventions with four proprietary mobile vehicles that also generate graphics, images from on-board cameras and satellite uplinks.
Since that date the Government helped us with employees salaries and there have been no engagement requests: in practice, all events were cancelled and not postponed.
L'Opera is still on standby ready to resume with football shooting as soon as possible and with motor sports in early July, determined to reduce losses. This silent period has seen them busy preparing a multi-handed operational protocol together with the occupational doctor and safety engineer.
Infante continued: We have launched a control committee that will enforce the application of strict preventive measures and, shortly, this protocol will be distributed to customers to reassure them of a safe restart. The
