Live From MLB at Rickwood Field: FOX Sports Broadcasts Inning of Game in Black and White

Live From MLB at Rickwood Field: FOX Sports Broadcasts Inning of Game in Black and White Creative agency All Of It Now and tech from disguise make the effect possible By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital

Thursday, June 20, 2024 - 9:19 pm

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In a cool nod to baseball television's past, FOX Sports broadcast the top half of the 5th inning of the MLB at Rickwood Field game in Birmingham on Thursday night in black and white and at a 4:3 aspect ratio.

For the game designed to celebrate the history and impact of the Negro Leagues, FOX Sports' production leads wished to bring the broadcast back in a way that paid tribute to what a televised baseball game might have looked like at the time of Willie Mays' famous The Catch in the 1954 World Series.

During the fifth inning of the MLB at Rickwood Field game, FOX Sports turned back the clock by broadcasting the action in black and white.

In addition to the changes in color and audio, the production also inserted era-appropriate graphics and switched the main game camera angle to a camera up and behind home plate, which was standard on baseball broadcasts many years ago.

The idea was a product of FOX Sports President, Production and Operations/Executive Producer Brad Zager; SVP, Production Judy Boyd; and game broadcast producer Pete Macheska and director Matt Gangl.

MORE FROM MLB AT RICKWOOD FIELD:

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The challenge there is how we bring an inning back to that time while not degrading the capture and the quality of what we are already producing, says Brad Cheney, VP, operations and engineering, FOX Sports. We sat for a couple months and figured out what tool was going to do this for us and walking through looks and what we ultimately wanted to do.

The high home camera position was the main view point during the inning.

FOX Sports worked with the creative agency All Of It Now and polarization and overlay technology from disguise to create the old-timey effect on the live broadcast.

While the black-and-white version was airing, all the monitors in the truck remained in full color, and cameras continued to shoot in 1080p HDR. Archival capture of the inning was still done at the highest acquisition quality. According to Cheney, this is an effect that happens further down the transmission pathway.

This. Is. Awesome! We turn the clock back to 1954

: FOX pic.twitter.com/xn021nmOG0

- FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) June 21, 2024

Attention was paid to the audio's impact on the overall feel of the effect when the production's video toggled from full HDR color to black and white. When the shift was called out by Gangl, FOX Sports A1 Joe Carpenter had presets ready on the Calrec Apollo console aboard Game Creek Encore to match. EQ settings accentuated the stadium's own natural sound and emulated a period sonic signature (which, like the stadium itself, might emphasize the midrange, recalling an era before ubiquitous subwoofers and full-range tweeters).

However, he anticipated that his moves would be executed far faster than the video shifts. The video processing is going to take a lot longer for them to be able to go back and forth from full HDR color to black and white and put effects in there, heexplained prior to the game. I can automate [some] of that, but I'll also just follow along and do a lot of it live. I'll be a kind of reverse Wizard of Oz: going from color to black and white.

Audio editor Dan Daley contributed to this report.

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2024/06/20/live-from-mlb-at-rickwood-field...
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