Friday was a fun day…Showtime was in town (well, New Town) to televise a North Dakota installment of their ShoBOX boxing series. You may have heard it promoted on the radio. I was on the TV crew as a ringside boom mic operator, so I took the day off from my regular job and headed north.

I wouldn’t choose any other line of work; video production is the greatest. LIVE video production is by far the most fun. I’ve been on crews for sports on NBC, CBS, FOX Sports Net, ESPN Sportscenter, Outdoor Life Network, and now Showtime. In the past I took photos of our jobs but didn’t have a blog to post them on! So we’ll start with this show. Here’s a little photo diary of the day.

These are the trucks we used to produce and uplink the show to Showtime. The big one is the rolling production studio, the little one is a separate satellite uplink truck.

This is the production area of the truck where the directors and producers sit, along with the graphics operator. For most of the shows I’ve worked in the past I’m at the graphics position, but I wouldn’t qualify for this show. Besides it’s neat to be in the arena during the telecast too! Note the bag of candy, open can of Dew, and bin of licorice whips. You can NOT do a show like this without a lot of sugar.

This is where all the tapes and replays are done. There are a ton of tape machines and an EVS (commonly called an “Elvis”) which is a hard-disk based replay system. There are multiple operators recording multiple cameras to make sure there are replays to show the viewers. There’s also another similar area to this one where all the cameras are controlled…not the focus and zoom and that kind of thing, but the balance of color balance, iris and other detail settings. That’s what makes a TV show look so good, even the pro cameras need constant tweaking for quality and consistency.

This is a separate area of the truck where the audio operator(s) work. There’s a lot of equipment above that wouldn’t fit into the shot. In addition, there were big mixers like this inside the arena and stuff too. The audio guys show up a day or two before the rest of us because they also take care of all our intercom headsets, hang microphones…it’s very complex.

A couple hundred grand worth of camera here. These cameras take two people to assemble; just the body and lens are a foot high and a foot tall, and a foot or two long. They’re enormous. But that’s how ya get the good pictures from a distance! There were two of these cameras on a platform south of the ring, as you can see.

That’s all I have for now; obviously I was there to work, so I could only take pictures over lunch. The truck is so full of people and so busy while we prepare for the show and during the show that there’s no room for pictures then.

Another cool perk (short for perquisite) is the “swag” as the kids call it. That being the t-shirts and hats and stuff. After all, we’re a Showtime crew. Gotta look like one. So these get added to my collection of shirts and hats with different station and network logos. Cool, huh?

One cool thing about a job like this is that everybody works hard. If you don’t, your phone doesn’t ring the next time the network is in town. It’s easy to get a reputation in any business, and you can’t screw around with a live TV show. The lighting guys take two days to set up, audio almost as long, and the crew that I was on started stringing cables, cameras and monitors nearly twelve hours before the show went on the air.

Everybody enjoys what they do, we’re very well fed with pizza, sandwiches, and enough free Mountain Dew to crystallize a kidney. Plus it’s fun to talk about other shows we’ve worked, swap business cards, talk about North Dakota with guys who’ve never been here before, and just have a good time. At least three times over the 14 hours a guy in charge would come by and say, “stop working, go eat” or “take a break” or “finish your pizza before you do that.” It’s all very professional and everything is well looked after.

Much of this event was staffed with video professionals from North Dakota, guys I’m proud to hang out with every time we do a show. Plus, it’s not every day that we can hang out with friends from Fargo and Grand Forks, so these give us an extra opportunity to visit. The local component of these crews is a great core of guys who I’ve learned valuable lessons from over the years. Having started in broadcasting as a kid in the late 80s, I’m the junior guy on the crew.

I taped the show and was told that I was on the air a few times (how can you not be, sitting ringside?) but I haven’t watched it yet. We didn’t get back to Bismarck until this morning, and I went straight to bed. It’s always fun to come back home and see what the show looks like, because on the crew, often we have no idea. And as long as we’re told “good show!” at the end of the day, that’s good enough for us.