Dirtcam, Expanded Specialty Cameras Highlight Fox Sports World Series Production

Fox Sports will broadcast game one of the 122nd World Series tonight from Milwaukee as the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays square off. And with a crew of 475, including more than 150 who will bounce back and forth between American Family Field in Milwaukee and Tropicana Field in Tampa Bay, the Fox Sports team is ready to deliver for baseball fans across the country.

What we like to say is that there's watching baseball, and then there's watching baseball on Fox, says Mike Davies, Fox Sports, EVP, Field and Technical Management and Operations. And what we like about this series is these are the two best teams, and they've been the best teams all year. So, while they're certainly not the big-market teams, that's alright as it's really cool to be in two new towns beginning tonight here in Milwaukee. And we plan on showing this beautiful stadium in the best possible way.

Last year Fox Sports took home for Sports Emmy awards for its postseason MLB coverage and this year they'll bring that same award-winning mentality to the show. New to the production lineup are versatile 4K and 8K Nucleus cameras, in addition to expanded AR initiatives alongside Major League Baseball that track respective pitches and swings from either side of the field. Also, a fleet of high-speed cameras will capture every spin on the ball and every inch of a bang-bang play at first, and two aerial drones will be flying overhead, synchronizing game action from multiple locations on the field.

Thomas Lynch, Fox Sports, Game and Studio coordinating producer, says when it comes to raising the bar from one post-season series to the next the biggest jump is from the Division Series to the Championship Series.

We pretty much double the resources from the DS to the CS, he says. And then the change from the Championship Series to the World Series is things like adding in two centerfield cameras.

Francisco Contreras, Fox Sports, executive director, operations, adds that three additional bells and whistles will be three dirtcams from Fletcher that are brand new for a World Series.

Fox Sports will expand its use of specialty cameras for the World Series. We'll have two at home plate and then one in the pitcher's mound, he says. That's something different that will be pretty neat to see.

Adds Davies: The dirtcams are interesting because we have to dig them into the field and they have a lot of back-end technology in them as they are wireless, he explains. We have high-gain antennas pointing down to those cameras to capture the camera signals.

And Lynch says that 4K boundary cameras will also return to the World Series as well as 4K cameras shooting side swings of batters. Also look for cameras in the batting cages during warmups which he says were a big hit last year.

With respect to production trucks, look for Game Creek Yogi to handle the games in Milwaukee while NEP's ND1 is front and center at in Tampa Bay. One thing that made this year's World Series set-up a little bit easier? The Brewers surprisingly swept the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLCS which gave Fox Sports and NEP plenty of time to get ND1 from Los Angeles to Tampa Bay and gave the team in Milwaukee plenty of time to prep for game one.

Fox Sports will use two drones tonight for its coverage of the World Series. One drone will be outside of the stadium while the other will be inside. Yogi didn't need to move at all and since we knew game one was going to be here we we've been ready for a while, explains Davies. We've been through other World Series where the [Championship Series'] made World Series preparation not this easy but television got smiled on this time.

And Fox isn't alone in benefitting as a World Series is always an event that has a compound and stadium filled not only with Fox Sports but also MLB International, MLB Network, ESPN, and others.

For the first time our new friends at Fox Sports Latin America are here and doing the feed for both Fox Mexico and Fox Deportes via a Rush Media truck here in Milwaukee, he says. What makes baseball interesting at this level is just how many people are here shooting the same game.

Lynch says the compound in Milwaukee is in the loading dock area where there are two compounds about 500 feet apart with fiber connecting them together. Tampa Bay, meanwhile, has the compound located in Lot 5 behind center field.

I built out eight different compound plans, says Lynch. You have to be proactive with these sorts of things.

Contreras also had eight sets of plans for the studio side of operations.

We did a couple of surveys here and then in Tampa we're going to have the studio near third base, he adds. We worked with Turner and NBC to get that place cabled out before the postseason even started because it was a new location and it needed a full infrastructure to be put in.

With respect to pre-game studio operations, Anil Letherwala, Fox Sports, senior studio operations manager, says that tonight's pre-game show position at American Family Field in Milwaukee will be at the Miller Lite Landing on the concourse while the postgame will see the show move to the field. Live from each site, one hour before game time, first-ballot Hall of Famers Derek Jeter and David Ortiz, along with World Series champion Alex Rodriguez, will offer one-of-a-kind insights from the Emmy Award-winning FOX MLB studio desk anchored by veteran host Kevin Burkhardt. Award-winning reporters Ken Rosenthal and Tom Verducci are also set to contribute to the pregame show, in addition to features from the renowned Tom Rinaldi, who leads Game 1 with a piece on Brewers' young ace The Miz, Jacob Misiorowski.

Letherwala says he began zeroing in on possible studio locations after the All-Star Game and by mid-to-late August the team began survey

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