Game plan

Last month, 65 of the world's top extreme sports athletes came together at Dubai Festival City to compete for gold as more than 28,000 spectators cheered them on at the ESPN X Games - an event primarily designed for television broadcast. The event was covered by ESPN's production team along with a local crew from MBC for transmission on Orbit ESPN and MBC Action as well as several international channels.

"Normally, for a demonstration event such as the ones we have held the last two times at the Dubai Creek Park, we have about 30 TV production staff," says John Davies, TV production and operations consultant. Davies was responsible for coordinating the TV production side of the games in Dubai along with a local crew from MBC. "This time round, we were doing a competition and such events need a lot more work on both the event management side as well as the TV production end because we require a much larger infrastructure. We need timing and scoring as well as live graphics. Even if this event is not being broadcast live as we normally do for the X Games in the US, covering a competition is virtually like doing a live broadcast.

The team had in place 60 staff including technical crew, cameramen, people for scoring and timing, graphics and the rest of the infrastructure needed for producing this event. "This, in my opinion, is the first time Dubai has ever witnessed a production effort like this for an action sport," he claims.

BMX and skateboard competitions were held on a vert ramp and street course, while Moto X Best Trick and Step Up competitions took place on a separate course at the same venue.

Eleven Sony ENG standard definition cameras were used to produce this event and had to be relocated and replugged for each competition. "The challenge is that as this is a competition, all these cameras have to move after each event. We had a half hour schedule after each competition to unplug, relocate and plug in these cameras and also ensure that all technical staff were in place, had a headset and were ready to communicate. When that competition ends, the cameras move again. You could say there are 11 cameras but doing the job of 33.

Davies and Deane Swanson, senior director of operations, Events at ESPN Games, reiterate that this would not have been possible without close coordination between their respective teams and a lot of planning and practice prior to the event.

"We had to practice all our moves in advance at the venue because when the crowd is there, we can't be moving all those cables from underneath them to relocate the cameras. What we do instead is pre-cable to the different areas that we need like the vert ramp to the street course to the Moto X, then just unplug the cameras, move them and plug them in again," explains Davies.