JVC cameras capture coverage of the French Archery Championship

The week-long French Archery Championship was covered in the form of a 26-minute programme on the Canal+ sports channel, Sport+. The broadcasts consisted of TV reporting, studio shows presented by a journalist, and highlights of the finals.

“Four JVC cameras were used to record the final stages: a GY-HM750, a 790 and two GY-HM650s. They were all connected to a HD-SDI switcher. The footage was then recorded on an AJA Ki-Pro equipped with a 500GB drive,” explains Jean-Baptiste Lucchini, producer of the multicam shoot.

As editing was done on a Mac workstation equipped with Final Cut Pro, the ProRes codec format was used.

Cameramen operated the two shoulder camcorders (one was stand mounted and the other was shoulder mounted). The two handheld cameras were installed near the two targets for the close-up shots.

Cyril Delorme, who was charged with the production of the event, comments: “We chose to use JVC cameras for three reasons. Firstly we think they have the best quality-price ratio on the market; we were on a very limited budget. The second reason is their flexibility. We want to be able to use these cameras not only in ENG mode for TV reporting and studio work, but also for multicam productions. Thirdly, the high quality HD-SDI connections and the LCD display screens were all that the operators required. There was no need to add extra accessories for the multicam production.”

The flyaway production unit was installed a few metres away from the firing line. Two 24-inch JVC DT-V24G1 studio monitors were used. The producer communicated with the camera operators by means of a Clear-Com intercom system.

With regards to sound, a Yamaha console mixed the sound levels from the four directional microphones placed close to the archers as well as the targets in order to best capture the sound of the arrows’ impacts.

“This set-up has allowed us to provide high quality HD production at a low cost. This means that we are able to offer both television and internet broadcasting solutions for sports productions with limited financial resources,” says Delorme.