Live from the 151st Open Championship: EMG’s Hamish Greig highlights group-wide effort

The main production gallery for the World Feed inside the Open IBC

EMG is once again at the centre of the Open Championship, and this weekend’s Open at Royal Liverpool caps off a busy two-week period for the company as last week it was at the centre of another big golf show: The Scottish Open. The two events are the largest golf productions the company does, and Hamish Greig, EMG’s director of golf operations, says that about 90% of the team that worked last weekend are hard at work this weekend as well.

“They’ve done very well and have been absolutely brilliant,” he says. “Some of the people did the set-up for the Scottish Open and then came down here while others worked through that event and are now here.”

The Scottish Open production was based around EMG’s Nova 112A and TSV12 for the main golf coverage and Nova 112B Nova 132 and Nova 121 for the unilateral coverage by Sky Sports , CBS Sports and PGA Tour. On Sunday night the trucks were packed up and driven to within two hour’s drive of Royal Liverpool so they could be on-site Monday morning.

Then, they were folded into a fleet of EMG OB units that work closely with the Open’s main broadcast building which is home to OSCAR (Outside Source Central Apparatus Room) as well as main production facilities for the Open World Feed and NBC Sports coverage.

EMG director of golf operations Hamish Greig at the 151st Open at Royal Liverpool

All told there are around 700 people roaming the course and compounds for the various rights holders. Many of them also tend to work on the same major events as well as plenty of smaller ones.

“We’re like a big golf family,” says Greig. “NBC, Sky, and ETP all work across the same events.”

EMG has provided some 160 cameras, spread across the world feed, Sky Sports, NBC, the Golf Channel and TV Asahi. Thirty-five of those cameras are RF (two in UHD HDR for UHD HDR coverage of the 13th and 17th holes) operating in 2G, 5G, and 7G bands and 22 receive sites throughout the course. There is also a Sony shallow depth of field camera with a Ronin gimbal.

“We’re amazed that we’ve actually managed to tweak it so it actually matches the other cameras because sometimes when you see it on other shows it can be a bit jarring,” says Greig.

The Compound
At the core of the compound for the Open Championship is the large IBC building that is comprised of production control rooms, replay areas, and audio rooms (and equipment racks) that allow for the NBC Sports team and the World Feed production teams to work at maximum efficiency. But that core IBC building is only part of a large compound that includes EMG production units and other porta cabins and facilities.

Greig says getting the compound built out is a bit like playing Jenga, but with massive OB units, smaller porta cabins and trucks, and the large broadcast centre in the middle.

On one side of the compound is the world feed operation; on the other are the unilaterals. Greig says Nova 125 is the first truck to turn up for the host-feed build-up as it serves as the main communications hub for the ETP and World Feed team. It is then followed by two trucks that are on the unilateral side of the compound: one for NBC and one for Sky Sports.

“Nova 125 handles all the comms panels and is the interface to the IBC for the rest of the compound,” says Greig. “When the other trucks arrive, they are all trunked together and become one big comms system with audio, video…the whole lot. And then we do the same thing for NBC when OB9 comes in so when NBC’s Newbert flypack comes in it gets connected to Stamford and away we go. Then Nova 119 comes in and is home to Sky Sports comms and Sky facilities. When those three are up you have the host, NBC/Golf Channel, and Sky in early and working on their infrastructure.”

Live from the 151st Open Championship:

• ACS leads speciality-camera charge; ‘Car Cam’ debuts
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The other trucks handle various aspects of Marquee Group coverage, featured hole coverage, and more. Nova 303 does sound, graphics, and commentary for Marquee group one (which also gives it the firepower to be a backup facility for OSCAR) Top Tracer cameras are also in that truck. There is also a third redundancy via OB12B which contains Marquee Group two’s main production area, an EVS area, main sound mix, and commentators.

“OB 12B is a third redundancy if anything happened,” says Greig.

There is also UHD/HDR coverage for holes 13 and 17 and those are produced in Nova 118. The holes are both par threes and have a green camera with a big lens and a radio camera plus access to all other feeds. The UHD HDR camera signals pass into Nova 118, are shaded using SDR monitors, and are then available in UHD HDR as well as 1080p SDR for the regular shows.

Spectators – and cameras – observe the action at the 13th hole of the 151st Open

Also on that side of the compound is Nova 54 which is a new concept in truck design and is being used to rack 20 world feed cameras.

“Nova 54 is a new remote truck concept which runs on HVO [Hydrotreated vegetable oil] as we want more sustainable trucks,” he adds.

The unilateral side of the compound includes Nova 131 which handles the Live at the Range show for IMG which is on-air from 9-12 and 2-6 pm every day. That truck also did a celebrity challenge last Sunday with six RF cameras, mics and three on-course commentators.

Japan’s TV Asahi is also on-site with a new workflow this year.

“For TV Asahi we are giving them all router panels and multiviewers so they can see and access every camera,” says Greig. “They have a mixer here, where they select which 12 feeds to send back, also a couple of EVS units so they can iso some other feeds and send them back as well.”

Canal Plus is also in the compound and requires just on-course commentary kits while BBC’s on-site commentary presence is a connection point to remote operations in Salford.

New Ways to Problem Solve
Figuring out how to deal with production technical support requests has always been a challenge as sometimes they can come in fast and furious. Dean Ruffy, systems development and maintenance manager at EMG, came up with a new way to bring some order to the requests with the introduction of a QR code that can be scanned and allow for requests to be filed.

“If a producer needs a power strip or work light, they can use the code, submit a request, and it pops up on the phones of me and a colleague and we can keep everyone happy,” says Ruffy. “It allows us to work much more efficiently.”

Hawkeye
The PGA Tour has made great use of the Hawkeye replay system to build out its highlights and coverage to better meet global rights holders’ specific needs and the Open Championship continues to do the same, with a small Hawkeye team located in the IBC and a larger one in Basingstoke. Ruffy says that this year there are 20 operators there connected via a 500 Mbps Internet line that gives them access to all feeds.

Adds Greig: “For Hawkeye, we’re feeding 170-odd feeds to them and NBC is making use of it as well back in the US,” he says. “Here we’re using three Hawkeye replays for super ISO back into the world feed. And then back in Basingstoke, there is a team clipping up and making those shots available to rights holders.”