Live from NHL Stadium Series: Levi s Stadium, 49ers Studios Play Gracious Host to Outdoor Hockey

With his cell phone pressed to his ear, Aron Kennedy stands in Levi's Stadium's video control room, looking out over a building he knows all too well, that looks awfully different today.

49ers Studios and Van Wagner Big Screen Network Productions will entertain nearly 70,000 fans at Levi's Stadium during Saturday's NHL Coors Light Stadium Series game between the Los Angeles Kings and the San Jose Sharks.

Just incredible, he says, dropping his phone to his side as he stares out over a glistening dichotomy of season and sport. It's a picturesque, 68-degree early afternoon in Santa Clara, CA at the stunning new home of the NFL's San Francisco 49ers. But today, it's the largest hockey rink in the world.

With most of the country seemingly covered in a sheet of ice this weekend, it almost seems fitting; why not here too?

The National Hockey League has taken over Levi's Stadium for Saturday night's Coors Light Stadium Series showdown between the Los Angeles Kings and the San Jose Sharks (NBCSN, 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT). It's the latest in the league's ultra-popular collection of outdoor hockey games designed to accomplish exactly what's happening in Santa Clara tonight, offering up a unique feast for the eyes.

Behind the scenes at the stadium, all hands are on deck from the 49ers Studios video production staff to help offer an ultra sleek fan experience for the nearly 70,000 in attendance. The NHL and its in-venue entertainment partner, Van Wagner Big Screen Network Productions (VWBSN) have been planning with 49ers Studios for months in advance of tonight's game to get the most out of the tech-savvy stadium.

The league and VWBSN will serve as primary producers of the event but many members of 49ers Studios team will serve in various key positions (technical director, camera op, replay op) due to their intimate knowledge of the stadium's split control room and technological infrastructure.

My job here is to make sure that the [control] room lives up to [the league's and VWBSN's] expectations, says Kennedy, who is Director of Gameday Production and Broadcast Operations for the 49ers. We've been hitting home runs - I know that's not the right sports analogy. The infrastructure here is so robust that there's not many requests that have come to us that we haven't been able to fulfill. You can get an event and a vast production like this into an older stadium and it might not have the ability to handle it. [Levi's Stadium] is a charm here.

At the traditional center of the stadium's in-venue video entertainment are a pair of LED boards from Daktronics - the north end zone board measures 48 feet high by 200 feet wide and the south end zone board stretches 48 feet high by 142 feet wide.

A split control room located in the stadium's upper reaches powers the displays. One room overlooks the awesome sites on the field and serves as home to higher end producers and production personnel. About 50 feet down the hall, the rest of the control room is in a window-less room and hosts tech personnel, including audio ops, shaders, and more.

Levi's Stadium is a Sony house. The control room is anchored by a MVS-7000X production switcher and the bowl is filled with seven PMW-F55 CineAlta 4K Digital Cinema Cameras - six of which will be used for the game tonight. Evertz also plays a huge role as an EQX Enterprise Hybrid video/audio/IP router serves as the glue to pull it all together. The control rooms are also loaded up with three eight-channel Evertz Dreamcatchers to process all of the 4K content being acquired by the cameras (the show will be produced in 1080p HD). Will Blackwell, regularly a senior producer for 49ers Studios, will serve as the chief replay operator and will man and monitor one of the Dreamcatchers throughout the game.

The NHL has also worked closely with Levi's Stadium to maximize its innovative Stadium App. In classic Silicon Valley fashion, the 49ers' tech-start up, VenueNext, is the brains behind the app that does everything from offer mobile ticketing and parking to mobile food and beverage ordering to wayfinding. During the football season, the app also pushed the boundaries on exclusive in-venue video entertainment serving up dedicated camera angles and the ability to control replays in the app's Game Center.

For the Stadium Series game, many of these features will be available as the league posted countless signage around the building's entrances encouraging fans to download the app and interact with it throughout the game. The video teams are offering four individual camera feeds and a program feed exclusive for fans at the game to access.

The draw of the Stadium Series is that it is more than just a game and this edition in Santa Clara is no different, as fans will be treated to musical performances from John Fogerty, Melissa Etheridge, and more. As a result, there's been a strong emphasis on audio and making sure that all aspects of the event from the scratch of a skate blade to the strum of a guitar sound perfect. In a unique set up, a front-of-house mixing console has been positioned on the field and an A1 will send full audio mixes to the TV production compound and to the in-stadium control room for the WJHW-installed, in-house speaker system.

Kennedy will bounce back and forth between both control rooms throughout the night assisting in anyway he can, while also filling duties on the engineering side. Kennedy's boss, Robert Alberino, the 49ers' Vice President and Executive Producer of 49ers Studios is on the road with the football coaching staff at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis. So, Aron is calling the shots.

Big events like this are what brought Kennedy across to the country to the Bay Area. A former member of the Philadelphia Eagles

LINK:	http://sportsvideo.org/main/blog/2015/02/live-from-nhl-stadium-series-...
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