Spikes Under the Lights Brings Collegiate Volleyball to AT&T Stadium in a Made-for-TV Event Built for Scale

A packager for TNT Sports, Kwokman Productions is on hand for the unique event with SkyCam, 16 POVs, four super-slo-mos, extensive RF audio

For the production team behind Thursday night's Spikes Under the Lights college-volleyball event at AT&T Stadium, the challenge is apparent to the naked eye.

An NCAA volleyball court is 59 ft. long and 29 ft. wide, a cozy 1,743 sq. ft. AT&T Stadium, the host of the latest fish-out-of-water, made-for-TV sports spectacle, is wait for it 3 million sq. ft.

As crews for the live production prepare, the creative challenge is to make viewers feel both ends of that spectrum: the speed of elite volleyball and the enormous scale of the building containing it.

We want the coverage of the sport to be intimate, says Matt Kwok, founder/president, Kwokman Productions, which is packaging the entire television production for TNT Sports, with distribution across TNT, truTV, and HBO Max. You want to be intimate with the sport but [have] a big feel to the event.

Crews set up inside AT&T Stadium prior to Thursday night's Spikes Under the Lights volleyball event. (Photo: @kevinsjuts on X)That philosophy is driving a sizable production complement for Thursday's three-hour show featuring Florida, Nebraska, Penn State, and SMU. The event, created by Full Day Productions and GSE Worldwide, features two semifinal matches followed by a championship, all played in a best-of-three-set format. The four schools will compete for a total $1 million purse.

Kwokman is rolling into Arlington with one production truck and a camera complement that goes well beyond a typical college volleyball telecast. The production plan calls for five hard cameras, three handhelds, a gimbal, four super-slo-mos, three robotic cameras, 16 POVs, and SkyCam.

It's kind of a lot for a volleyball game, Kwok acknowledges with a wry smile.

AT&T Stadium, however, presents an unusual visual problem. A traditional camera position high above the 50-yard line works perfectly for an NFL gridiron but would have a volleyball court looking tiny within the frame. Instead of simply adapting to the venue's existing infrastructure, the production team has essentially created its own volleyball-specific camera geometry.

Originally, we thought, Oh man, are we going to have to be at the normal 50-yard-line camera?' says Kwok. For volleyball, [that] would be so high up and so far back that it wouldn't track that well.

Rather than try to use estbalished camera positions inside AT&T Stadium, Kwokman Productions placed cameras on forklifts much closer to the small playing surface at the center of the massive field. (Photo: Kowkman Productions)The crew will use a combination of scissor lifts and scaffolding to establish the appropriate height and distance for primary camera positions.

Kwokman studied comparable major events staged in large buildings - including boxing at AT&T Stadium and basketball Final Fours - for cues on how to make a relatively small competition surface work inside such a massive space.

The company also enters the project with recent volleyball experience after working with League One Volleyball this past season. We had some findings on angle of viewership for the Camera 1 and Camera 2 positions, Kwok notes. We just had to take it to the math and figure it out from there.

The unusual venue also gives the production team something it typically doesn't have: freedom to put cameras almost anywhere. It's a flat canvas for us to be able to put coverage in, he says.

Intimate Sport, Massive Event

Creative freedom has helped Kwokman build two visual layers into the show. At court level, the production wants viewers to feel the speed and athleticism of the sport: the height of a jump, the force of a swing, the speed of the ball, and the emotion on the faces of players and coaches.

At the same time, the crew doesn't want viewers to forget that this is happening beneath the massive videoboard and roof of one of the most recognizable sports venues in the country.

Two of the tools that will be invaluable to that approach are SkyCam, which happens to be installed at AT&T Stadium for football operations, plus an on-field gimbal. The SkyCam will help us with the big feel of the event, Kwok explains. The gimbal will help us be closer to the action and show the faces and all the different sides of the equation that are more intimate.

The SkyCam offered a fortunate opportunity to add another major-event tool to the production and will play a role in one of the show's signature elements: player introductions. Instead of entering from the Cowboys' traditional tunnel area, teams will walk out from a corner of the stadium, with Kwokman covering the sequence using the gimbal, handhelds, a robotic camera, and SkyCam.

We are looking to show that uniquely, says Kwok. One of the things we want to showcase is the athleticism of some of these athletes: how high they jump, how hard they hit, how fast that ball moves. That's key for us: to have an intimate feel to the sport production but a big feel to the event side.

Much of the production crew has experience together on major sports broadcasts, and Kwok says that background has influenced the philosophy of the show.

Producer E'van Hickmon and Director Ben Malveau will anchor the show at the front desk, supported by Tech Manager Joe Heck, Production Manager Luisa Mataele, Operations Producer Lindsay Gagnon, and Operations Coordinator Tara Quinn.

POVs and Robos Open New Angles

Some of the production's most unusual views will come from its extensive POV-camera deployment. DV Sport, which is handling official replay for the event, is providing 16 POV cameras that will serve both officiating and broadcast purposes.

PTZ cameras are strategically positioned throughout the venue.That giv

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2026/08/27/spikes-under-the-lights-brings-...
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