All about the Atlanta Braves video scoreboard production

Here's an interesting first-person account published in Creative Cow. Matt Montemayor takes us "behind the scoreboard" with the Atlanta Braves at Turner Field. Some highlights:

I am the Production Manager of BravesVision, which provides in-house video production for the Atlanta Braves. My primary responsibility is to create content for and produce the `show' that fans see on the high definition video board at Turner Field in Atlanta.

Our work isn't broadcast; everything that we produce is displayed in-house only. But we have a game day crew of about 30 people, and run our show much like what you would see in a production truck or studio.

The centerpiece of our show is our high definition video board: a Mitsubishi Diamond Vision. It's huge. At roughly 80 feet wide by 72 feet tall, it's one of the biggest HD video boards in the world.

As they watch the game, fans are surrounded by video, graphics, animations, and statistics, instead of just seeing it on the screen.

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Another big difference between our show and a broadcast show is that during game action, we don't actually show any action. Our video board is right above the batter's eye , in the area behind center field where there are no seats or anything else that might distract the batter when he's looking at the pitcher.

So when a batter steps up to the plate, we only have still images and stats on the board.

In between batters we show replays, crowd shots, live action, and elements to pump up the crowd.

After a big play we continue the momentum with crowd prompts to keep the fans fired up and shoot off fireworks after home runs. Arguably, one of the coolest parts of my job is pushing the little red fireworks button.

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BravesVision consists of a small full-time staff but a much bigger game day staff. On the full time side there is myself, an audio designer, two engineers and an editor.

On the part time/freelance side we have all of the positions you would find in most broadcasts: director/ technical director, graphics op, font coordinator, replay op, two playback server ops, eight cameras (4 hard, 1 wireless, and 3 robotic), one A2, 3 audio assists, a video shader, and a utility player.

In addition, we have several positions unique to a stadium or arena production: a PA announcer, LED/ fascia board operator, matrix operator, a statistician, and a scorer.

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