Live at Wimbledon: Inside the new press conference room
By: Ken Kerschbaumer, SVG Editorial Director
Tuesday, July 3, 2012 - 4:18 pm

The new Wimbledon press conference area has new cameras, new mics, and new lighting.

A technical revamp to the Wimbledon press conference room, courtesy of SIS Live and RG Sound Engineering, has resulted in an improved look, next-generation operations, and the ability to make the job of being a reporter and interviewee easier.

“We had a room for about 10 years that had older camera mounts and mics that were on fishing rods on each side of the room [so they could reach reporters around the room,” says Roger Neal, who helped oversee the project for All England Lawn Tennis Club. “But now we have smaller cameras on much more modern ACS Smarthead mounts.”

Lite Panels LED lighting as also been installed in the main room while a second room still has tungsten lighting and a third studio used by the BBC for one-on-one interviews has Kino Flo lighting.

“We use a one-eighth orange filter and some diffuser to get the color temperature to an acceptable color temperature that is down towards tungsten levels,” he says. “With full orange we would lose a huge percentage of the light and they would look awful.”

New mics installed in the ceiling are controlled via a touchscreen.

RJ Jones aided with the audio needs, installing suspended cardioid microphones in the room that, coupled with a touchscreen controller on stage, allow for mics nearest the questioner to be activated.

“We improved the look of the room so we don’t have cables or students running around,” adds Neal. “It looks smarter.”

All of the interview areas feed signals into a main control room that has a Panasonic vision mixer and remote control of the cameras.  Two cameras are in the main room with one in both interview room 2 and the BBC studio. All sound is embedded and Sony HDCAM decks are on hand for local recording. The signals also go through to IMG and the central control room at Wimbledon.

Comments are closed.

Name (required)

Email (required)

Website

Speak your mind

Join SVG Today:
Your SVG membership will enable you to benefit from our continued educational opportunities, valuable event discounts, as well as multiple print and online resources.
Click here for details
Home
SVG Home
Sponsors
About SVG Europe
SVG Europe Advisors
Job Board
Subscribe
Safety
Contact Us
Become an SVG Sponsor:
The SVG has a variety of sponsorship options to meet the outreach and marketing needs of virtually every sports industry organization. Find out more about our range of industry-supported activities, and discover how your company can support the sports video industry. Click here for details
Join SVG Today!
Become a Sponsor
Current Sponsors
Contact Sponsorship Services
© 2006 - 2013 SVG Europe