Live From 147th Westminster Dog Show: Inside the Preparation, Execution of Fox Sports' Front Bench Directors, producers highlight events' unique production elements By Kristian Hern ndez, Senior Editor
Tuesday, May 9, 2023 - 3:08 pm
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One of the more unique shows from a viewing vantage point, the Westminster Dog Show puts production professionals to the test. Comprised of two separate competitions - blazing fast dogs during the Master's Agility Championship on Saturday and pure elegance and beauty during Best in Show on Tuesday - each section requires a certain set of skills to execute properly at the front bench. Both production pairings - VP, Production, Zac Kenworthy and Director Rich Dewey on the Master's Agility Championship as well as Producer P.T. Navarro and Director Bryan Lilly on Best in Show - sat down with SVG to discuss how each show is different, how they handle the speed, timing, and cadence of each event, what it's like to produce this event at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, and more.
VP, Production, Zac Kenworthy, and Director Rich Dewey were in charge of the Master's Agility Championship.
You're used to working on traditional stick-and-ball sports, but when it comes to the Dog Show, how do you prepare for an event like this?
Kenworthy: Last year was my first time doing Agility, so when you get into it, you understand it right away. You can watch all of the tape you want, but there's no real way of prepping for this properly until you're in the truck and doing it. You get the information on each individual group size, and you get a feel that the big lumbering dogs will be a bit slower, and those smaller, quicker dogs are going to fly. Once each group starts, it's about doing what you can to keep up to speed as much as possible.
Humans comprehend the fact that a ton of cameras are used on major sporting events, but dogs aren't cognizant that they're being filmed. How do you follow a dog when you don't necessarily know where they'll go on the course?
Dewey: You have to trust that they're going to go where they're prescribed to go since they have help from their handlers. For me, it starts with getting the course map and figuring out where the cameras can and should go. That's based on learnings that we've found out through trial and error over the years, so a super-slow-motion camera may be better than a high-angled camera or vice versa. We also have a rehearsal the night before with dogs that run the course and help show us the route of the course. Oftentimes, they're not the most polished and go off course a lot, but we do eventually learn how we're going to cut the show a dozen or so runs. When mistakes are made by the dogs, we'll already know where some of those danger zones are and we'll make sure to be high and wide enough to not miss anything.
Lilly: The dogs are actually pretty predictable compared to humans, but the biggest challenge we have is that we've been in different venues [over the past four years]. We try to give the same feel and look that the dogs and their handlers are used to having.
A view of the Master's Agility Championship at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Zac, you're accustomed to producing MLS games with a certain sense of pacing, and Bryan, you work on live productions of the NFL on Fox. How do you adjust to the pacing of the Master's Agility Championship?
Kenworthy: We divvy up [the show] a bit. There are 10 dogs in each group, and what ended up working well for us last year, we'll run five dogs in the group, go to commercial, come back to wrap up with the final five dogs, and then do an interview. During each chunk of five dogs, it's pretty quick with one going right after the other. I think that's a really good experience for the viewer with constant action, and at that halfway point, we'll show the elements that they'll do inside of the venue before going to commercial.
Lilly: In our mind, we've measured out the perfect timing on paper, but the judge is in charge once the show starts. It's really up to them because there's no clock or a designated start and stop.
Rich, this show comes with a lot of POV cameras for real-time action instead of beauty or behind-the-scenes shots. How do you integrate these angles and work with a complement of cameras that aren't traditionally the main cameras on other shows?
Dewey: The fast dogs go extremely fast unless they're going through an obstacle or apparatus that forces them to stop or slow down, which is really only limited to the teeter. Other than that, they're racing across the dog walk and flying through the tunnels. [Angles of the] littler and bigger dogs tend to work out more with our POVs, but I have to tell myself that we're going to work in this specific camera during a certain run as well.
Last year's event was at the Lyndhurst Mansion in Tarrytown, NY. How does that temporary facility compare to the permanent infrastructure of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center?
Kenworthy: [Working here] has come with a lot of benefits. At Lyndhurst, some folks on our operations team were there for a little almost three weeks in order to set things up. Here, we can come in and turn things around a lot quicker. We also have the ability to have some really awesome tools, like the Spidercam, which is great to have to cover an event like this. that's really awesome to be able to cover this. We got a chance to look at it during rehearsal and throughout the show, and it adds another dimension that we've never had in the past. Being in this TV-ready venue, I think it makes our job a lot easier.
Spidercam isn't allowed past a certain height on the lower bowl of A
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Live From 147th Westminster Dog Show: Inside the Preparation, Execution of Fox Sports' Front Bench Directors, producers highlight events' unique production elements By Kristian Hern ndez, Senior Editor 
