Additional camera, more stats highlight the production, which can be viewed at Ultiworld Disc Golf throughout the weekend!
June 22, 2016 by Steve Hill in Coverage with 0 comments
With a lofty goal of 10,000 viewers being set and the main talking point for the Disc Golf Pro Tour being to “Watch!” we were curious how the upcoming live stream of the Vibram Open might differ from past broadcasts. So, we reached out to SmashboxxTV’s Terry Miller, as well as Jamie Thomas, who will be providing statistical analysis for the tour, to gain some insight into the event.
Multiple Card Coverage Confirmed After an Indiegogo campaign that has, thus far, brought in almost $6,000, DGPT Director Steve Dodge confirmed last week that multiple card live coverage was a go for the Vibram Open (with the remainder of the tour to be determined based on further fundraising). According to Miller, that extra card will be covered by a single camera with a live microphone and will allow for Smashboxx producer Jonathan Van Deurzen to cut away at any time to the additional feed.
“We likely won’t have commentary there,” Miller said. “We’ll just be cutting to someone and they’ll be able to give you the sights and sounds of the game in, dare I say, a kind of a raw feel. We’re just trying to reduce downtime that there is, and we’ve got to run commercials and things of that nature. But it’s always nice to know that we can go to another camera of action.”
Pre-produced and Near-Live Cutaways Integrated The addition of Thomas to the broadcast team is going to give Smashboxx the ability to have in-the-moment statistical analysis, as Thomas will be on call from his home studio in San Francisco to break down any of the action.
“In the perfect world, we get to Hole 4 and I would be able to cue it up, or Jonny my producer would say, ‘Hey, we’ve got Jamie talking about Hole 4,’” Miller said. “And that will be my cue to say, ‘As we move over to the tee on 4, here’s some stats, here’s some analysis by Jamie Thomas.’”
For Thomas, it is one more way for disc golf broadcasts to mirror their mainstream brethren.
“Our goal is to create, essentially, the ‘in studio update’ type of feel that bigger sports broadcasts have been doing for years,” Thomas said.
Statistics Displayed On-Screen Aside from cutting away to Thomas, Miller said that Smashboxx will be using on-screen overlays of the Pro Tour’s UDisc-powered statistics platform. Van Deurzen should be able to pull up a variety of graphics, including individual player metrics, leaderboards, and hole statistics, all of which are updated in real time.
“That is going to, hopefully, blow people’s minds,” Miller said. “It’s going to be huge. If people liked, or partially loved, any of the [Disc Golf] World Tour stats, these are a hundred times more intense than those.”
Live streaming of the Vibram Open begins tomorrow at 3 p.m. EDT and can be viewed on SmashboxxTV’s YouTube channel, or right here on Ultiworld Disc Golf’s front page.
