Vest-Pocket Live Sports Production Truck Packs Powerful Punch
By Jim Bask
Once upon a time, television production trucks were like cruise ships on wheels. They pulled into a sporting event, swaggering with self-importance; fifty feet of gleaming metal pulled behind a pavement-buckling Peterbilt that belched diesel smoke and deafened every innocent bystander within a mile’s radius. Once parked, these production trailers began unloading thousands of pounds of equipment and unspooled miles of cable. Inside one these lustrous fifty-foot beasts, you might find a dozen or more crew members, all working away happily, while the truck sucked down power like a thirsty brontosaurus.
While there still are plenty of those fifty-foot behemoths out on the roads, I’d like to encourage you to contemplate a different sort of picture. Imagine, if you would, a Ford Focus pulling up in front of that same venue with what looks like a horse trailer trailing behind, a five-by-ten-foot box, smaller than your average bathroom. Imagine the crew, running extension cords from their tiny truck to a pair of household outlets. Ask yourself what kind of show a production truck that size could put on.
A pretty impressive one it turns out. How about a six-camera production with three announcers in the booth and one on the field, an eight channel instant replay position, four channels of intercom, and full IFB capabilities, as well as talkback? Once or twice a week throughout the spring, summer, and fall of 2016, Production Consulting Group has been producing top-quality soccer broadcasts for the Pittsburgh Riverhounds, a member of the United Soccer League, from just such a truck. John Powell, Director of Technical Operations for PCG, a company with offices in both Pittsburgh and Cleveland, helped build this tiny production dynamo three years ago, and he’s understandably proud of what his baby can do.
“When I got started in this business in the 80s, video switchers were just video switchers,” Powell says. “They required enormous racks of equipment that ran from floor to ceiling. They ran on 220 power. But now, with the current line of TriCaster switchers, like the 8000 in this truck, I have multiple re-entry, a multitude of keyers, animated replay wipes, and all the various macro functions built-in. With this truck, I can put on a program and no one can tell what size truck we’re using.” Take that fifty-footers…[continue reading]