AVP Champions Cup Series Offers Live (Socially Distanced) Beach Volleyball on NBC, Amazon Prime Echo Entertainment produced the first of three weekend broadcasts from Long Beach, CA By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor
Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - 3:42 pm
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Live beach volleyball returned over the weekend with the first of three AVP tournaments to be held on a sand-court venue created on the Long Beach (CA) Convention and Entertainment Center parking lot. Broadcasts of the AVP Champions Cup Series, which replaces the normal June-October AVP season, are being produced by long-time AVP production partner Echo Entertainment with strict health and safety protocols in place. With sports fans starved for live content of any kind these days, AVP and Echo have teamed up to bring beach volleyball to the masses on NBC, NBCSN, and Amazon Prime, using a unique venue and hybrid production model.
Echo Entertainment and AVP have deployed netcams for coverage
After we went through all the emotions of losing our full season, says AVP Creative Director Josh Glazebrook, we started going through how we were going to bring the sport to the world during the COVID crisis, and we came up with this concept, so we're incredibly stoked to pull this off. Since then, we've had many, many hours of discussion about how we can do this safely with the right protocols while still putting ourselves in position to [produce] a great event. We have a really great group here who has worked around the clock to make this happen. It has been a journey, but everyone has come together, and we're excited to bring this to the fans.
The AVP Champions Cup Series kicked off last weekend with the Monster Hydro Cup. The Wilson Cup and Porsche Cup will hit the beach in the next two weekends.
Beach Compound: Dome Trucks Serve Dual Courts for NBC, Prime
AVP and Echo have rolled out Dome Productions' Journey and B100 XPT mobile units to cover two courts - stadium court and outer court - at the Long Beach Convention Center.
With no fans in attendance, AVP has modified venues from its traditional setup to include large branded walls.
In the truck compound, Journey is serving Amazon Prime's first-to-last-ball live-streamed coverage, as well as its pre/postgame coverage. Meanwhile, the B100 XPT flex-space is serving NBC Sports' linear-broadcast windows with a small control room featuring a Grass Valley Korona switcher panel (that pulls an M/E off the Grass Valley Kayenne K-Frame switcher in Journey), audio board, EVS replay system, graphics, and scorebug system.
There are two separate directors, so the cameraman will actually serve two masters, says Echo Entertainment Technical Producer Pierce Williams. Even though the NBC director will take a kind of a quote unquote' world feed from the Amazon Prime feed, they also have the ability to take any cameras via that Korona panel that takes an M/E stripe off the main K-Frame. So NBC takes the Prime show but also can expand on that for their own benefit.
A third production dedicated to Prime's coverage of the outer court is using a remote cloud-based workflow. Echo has deployed a TVU Networks IP transmission system and arranged for a 1-Gbps internet path to deliver camera feeds and audio to Echo's production facilities, where the production team is located, just up the road in Calabasas, CA. On-air talent for these matches are calling the action off-tube from their homes.
Encompass Digital Media has rolled out a satellite-uplink trunk for transmission needs, providing four encoder paths: one for NBC's linear telecasts, two for Amazon Prime's streaming, and one as a backup for the cloud-based remote production from the outer court.
Court Coverage: With No Fans, On-Court Becomes Key With no fans in attendance, AVP has modified the venues from its traditional setup. Stands that usually have seating have been converted to large branded walls, and AVP has rolled in a full set of LED ribbon boards to surround the court.
It's not uncommon for us to build in parking lots, notes Glazebrook, so that's not much of a departure for us. But, obviously, not having people in the stands is a huge departure for us. We think we've created a gladiator feel with walls surrounding the competition court. The idea is to give the feel of a studio without the people.
With no fans in attendance, AVP and Echo have made on-court and player audio a priority
AVP and Echo have deployed a total of 16 cameras in Long Beach: 11 on stadium court and five PTZ units for the outer court. The stadium-court complement comprises three Sony hard cameras (including a Sony HDC-4300 high-speed system) and five handhelds, as well as three mini POV cameras (including a netcam to capture big plays at the net).
With no fans in attendance, AVP and Echo have made on-court audio a priority. The coverage features increased wireless microphones, including units on the referees and coaches, on the umbrellas above the players' boxes, and six strewn across on the net.
We also have a lot more effects mics on the court because we are redirecting a lot of the effects mics that would have been on the crowd to the court, says Williams. We want to bring out the sound of the game so the viewer can feel the action more than they have in the past. The crowds have been so good for AVP for years that hearing anything in there can be tough sometimes. This is going to be a lot different and should be new experience for the viewers, which will be great.
Glazebrook adds that, with more casual fans likely tuning into the tournaments given the dearth of live sports, AVP and its broadcast partners are endeavoring to appeal to a more mainstream audience.
The past few weeks, we've gone over how to bring it down to the basics a little bit so
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AVP Champions Cup Series Offers Live (Socially Distanced) Beach Volleyball on NBC, Amazon Prime Echo Entertainment produced the first of three weekend broadcasts from Long Beach, CA By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor 
