Big package: Groundbreaking AR for live athletics comes to Grand Slam Track
Girraphic created the AR-heavy graphics package for the new Grand Slam Track season
For the new Grand Slam Track athletics series, production company for the broadcast, M-CHP, a joint venture between Momentum Broadcast and Carr Hughes Productions, has pushed boundaries on augmented reality (AR) graphics.
Tasked with making a splash and redefining how track athletics is viewed on TV, the M-CHP team quickly turned its attention to how graphics could help them do that. It turned to Australian-based graphics company, Girraphic, for the graphic design and execution.
Big package
There were four systems of AR on four cameras in Kingston: on a regular camera, on a jib, on a steadicam, and on a drone.
Anneka Radley-Hodges, Momentum Broadcast senior producer, explains the thinking behind the use of AR: “The AR is a big deal because most of the package actually is AR, so it’s not just like an opening graphic; we’ve got start lists, results, athlete intros, we had kind things at the last minute so if someone had won a slam, they had a big champion graphic,” Radley-Hodges says. “Everything that we would normally just see as an onscreen full frame or something, we were using AR, which is a big ask. Also the stings were AR, and it meant that we could then showcase different areas of the stadium, we could use elements of the stadium to pin onto, we could use the beautiful views of Jamaica up to the mountains or looking out to the sea.”
She continues: “With the graphics, we knew that to differentiate Grand Slam Track from other events, everything on screen was going to be judged. So the graphics for us was the perfect way to immediately show that Grand Slam Track was different and it was exciting and it was new.
“When we spoke with Girraphic, they totally got our vibe,” continues Radley-Hodges. “We’d seen some of their graphics before and they’re really exciting; they’re big, they’re bold. And we understood also with the event that we needed to explain things to the viewer about how it’s going to work, so the graphics were so crucial in doing those things, but we didn’t want them just to become another package.
“We worked really closely with Girraphic explaining that Mark [Fulton, executive producer at Momentum Broadcast] had ideas for AR and we knew we wanted more kind of visuals within the stadium, as well as bringing innovation; it had to be something that would tell you information that you wanted to see.
“Working with Girraphic just became a really exciting collaboration,” Radley-Hodges goes on. “I spoke to Adam, who’s one of the designers who was amazing, and he said, “thanks for being the client that says yes”. He said normally people say, “oh no, that’s sounds complicated, don’t worry about it,” whereas we wanted them to push the boundaries and we wanted to give it a go.”
However, she adds: “We didn’t just chuck it all on screen and hope for the best. We had weekly meetings with Girraphic going through everything, and they were sending us videos. Between the two of us collaboratively, we just kept saying, “oh, could we maybe add this on, and would this work?” and from November we built this package that I think ultimately just did everything that Grand Slam Track wanted, what we wanted and what Girraphic wanted, which was just to bring something really exciting to screen.”
Mark Fulton, executive producer for Momentum Broadcast, adds: “The thing that was really pleasing for me was that Anneka and Rich [O’Connor, Carr Hugh’s Productions’ executive producer and the producer of the domestic feed for the Grand Slam Track in the States] worked really well with Girraphic to come up with the design of the graphic, which I think everybody’s just been blown away by. It’s just taken athletics graphics to a different level.”
Steadicam magic
On the AR graphics, Kevin Orwin, technical director at Momentum Broadcast, says: “Most of these have been hardwired or studio-based previously, but we were the first people to do AR graphics with steadicams before, and on drones, although they have been used before, this was the first time it had been done on a live OB with these style of graphics.”
Read more High benchmark: Inside the inaugural Grand Slam Track production from Jamaica
Adds Fulton: “Drones have been used before, but what we were able to do on the steadicam, which was a first, was that we were able to cut between AR graphics. We were able to have a start list that would come up in AR and then we could see the athlete pop out on the graphic, and we cut to a closeup of that AR on another graphic, which as far as I’m aware, has never been done before.”
Explains Fulton on the new AR steadicam graphics: “Where you would see a normal start list for the Diamond League or for the World Championships, with a start list that comes up at the side and then as they go down the line of the athletes introducing them it would just animate out, what we did in Kingston is we actually saw the athlete and there was an AR graphic that came up at the side of them, and then the steadicam could walk onto the next athlete, so the graphic went out of shot, and then another graphic animated on for the next athlete. I’ve always hated the animate on, animate off, animate on, animate off thing; animating a graphic on, and then walking past it and the graphic just goes out of shot as the camera’s walking on, works beautifully.
“Now that we’ve got the first slam underway and we’ve got data under it, we start to populate those graphics more now,” continues Fulton. “The other thing that we did was that we started to add social media handles to the graphics as well, so all the athletes had social media handles, pictures, anything from X or anything that from a social perspective we felt enhanced the value of it. So we did a lot of that as well.”
Another unusual use of the graphics that is rarely if ever seen is results graphics in AR, says Radley-Hodges: “We’ve got a video wall on the side and we’re playing the finish of the race that’s just been on the results graphic in AR. That’s a brand new thing as well, which really adds to it because it’s all dynamic then.”
Momentum also did live tracking of the athletes integrating points over two races. Radley-Hodges comments: “This meant we were making sure that our clock was dynamic so it doesn’t just show the timing, it shows metres to go, it shows laps; it shows a lot more than just a timing graphic. It also has raised progression, so you can see where the athletes are at on the track with the red going round it.
“It’s just those little added value bits for the viewer to be able to understand where we’re up to if they just tuned in.”
Grand Slam Track Miami takes place from 2 to 4 May 2025. This is followed by Philadelphia from 30 May to 1 June, and Los Angeles from 27 to 29 June