Switzerland’s tpc captures Burton European Open

One of the highlight’s of the winter snowboarding programme, the Burton European Open is currently underway at Laax in the Swiss canton of Graubünden. It’s the eighth year the competition has been hosted there, and technology and production center switzerland ag (tpc) is the OB provider charged with bringing pictures all the way down the mountain from the slopestyle course and the 140m halfpipe.

“For the slopestyle course, our Cablecam delivers footage at speeds up to 70kph,” explains René Salvini, Technical Producer, tpc. “The wireless cameras are used as ‘follow cams’ where the camera operator follows the rider on skis.”

tpc is using 10x wired Sony HDC1400Rs to cover the event, along with 2x wireless PDW350s for the followcams, a Sony HDC 3300R Super Motion, and a HDC P-1 mounted on the cable rig. Stage Tec Nexus/Aurus is being used for audio mixing, routing and distribution. All this is being piped though its 25t, 12m, MAN-based HD4 unit, which is built around a Sony MVS-8000 vision mixer and Probel 240×336 matrix, and carries six channels of EVS.

“25 crew members will work on the event,” says Salvini. “Roads up to the mountain are narrow and parking space is very limited, so our HD4 truck with large technical capacity and compact size is ideal for this kind of production.”

Even so, HD4 doesn’t make it anywhere near the event itself. “The distance between the TV-Compound (where our OB Van is parked) and event site is six kilometres,” says Salvini. “All signals to and from the event site on top of the mountain are run over pre-installed dark fibre. We also run 5km fibre cables on both slopes – Slopestyle & Halfpipe.”

Special skills required? Skiing basically. “All transports, both material and staff, are done by cable car, skidoos and skis,” adds Salvini. “Snowboard or skis are mandatory for all crew members to get on site.”