Canal+ to produce World Judo Championships

France: Canal+ will take care of the production of the international signals of the World Judo Championships 2011 to be held at the Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy towards the end of August.

Canal+ is keen on the sport and provides numerous broadcasts of judo competitions on its channels and particularly on its sports channel.

“Canal + is rarely host broadcaster except for some football matches. It is quite important for us then to produce the international signals of the World Judo Championships,” says François-Charles Bideaux, the production manager of the group.

The technical equipment provided by the channel will be up to this exceptional event. For the first time, the four tatami during selection matches will be shot in multicam and live broadcast will be available from 9:00am on all international channels. For each combat, a visual presentation of the names of the Judoka, the scoring and the time will be provided by Vive Limited. Four international signals will be supplied for the selection phases, which makes a great improvement on the previous editions.

There will be two HD production trucks from AMP Visual Services: one for the international network (director: Laurent Lachand) and the other one for the bundle Canal + and Canal + sport only (director: Pascal Mathieu).

There will be a total of twenty or so cameras to capture the action from all the tatami. Every match will be seen from above by remote controlled units fixed on the ceiling right over the mats.

At the semi-finals, the cameras will be replaced and focused on the two remaining tatami used for the competition from then on. A crane, a railcam and a DVS SuperLoupe system will be deployed within the few square meters of Bercy.

Canal+ will have a crew of over fifty technicians on the spot plus two production supervisors, the administrative team and all the sportscasters to cover the event.

With the London 2012 Olympic games in a year time, the event will be scrutinized by the judo specialists (there are about 600,000 members in France). There is, at present, no information whether Canal + who has broadcasted the entire Olympic Games since 1992, intends to or will be able to make an agreement to buy the broadcasting rights regarding France held by France Télévisions so far.