What's That, You Say? Don't Have Speedvision? Better Call Your Cable Operator Today.
Andrea Montermini is on his hot lap at Laguna Seca. The Momo Ferrari drops through the Corkscrew faster than the Otis in the Hancock Tower. Flicking the 333SP from berm to berm, he's gone from sight so soon you forget to click your stopwatch.
Impressed with his driving? Awed by the technical sophistication of his million-dollar car? World Sports Car racing is undeniably spectacular. But the business of turning it into television is just as grabbing. View a lap of Laguna Seca through the lens of Montermini's in-car cam and you're virtually driving the 333SP. This is the story of how Speedvision puts you in that seat.
Sneak behind the scenes of a live production and you'll appreciate the enormity of the effort involved in bringing road racing to TV. You might even conclude that hustling the Ferrari is easier than conveying its image into your living room. Instead of one driver at the keyboard, you'll need a dozen camera operators working in concert. Instead of a million-dollar car, you'll need a five-million-dollar production trailer. And rather than four tire changers and a refueler to provide service, you'll need a cast of two dozen techies, talking to each other simultaneously while trying to make sense of 64 different TV screens.
There is one crucial difference between the hot seat in the Ferrari and the one in the TV truck: degree of danger. Screw up in the production rig, and you merely embarrass your network. Screw up in the Ferrari and you die. It's a distinction that's hard to blur. Since Moretti did not invite me to drive Montermini's Ferrari, I'll have to put you in the cockpit through the eyes of television. However, Speedvision did invite me into their cockpit for the race. To find out what happens on the other side of your TV screen, I spent a race weekend inside Speedvision's trailer at Laguna Seca, as the guest of Coordinating Producer Jeff Hallas. I learned more about race production in three hours than I picked up in 40 years of watching races on TV The bottom line here is that presenting a major road race live is like orchestrating a moonshot.
Take the preparations for Laguna's final FIA GT/WSC contest of 1997. Lay miles of cable to establish 12 separate camera posts. Add two in-car remotes, two robot trackside cams called "come-and-goes," and two pit reporter teams, and you've got 18 videos shooting simultaneously. Raceday coverage demands close order drills by a team of specialists trained to keep track of time, image, voice and drama without hesitation.
When you open the airtight aluminum door to NEP's trailer, your pupils expand as they grow accustomed to the cathode illumination of the inner sanctum. Your first impression is wonderment at this room full of chattering technicians, each trying to overspeak the other like pit bulls at the New York Stock Exchange. At the far end of the diminutive room is a bank of monitors showing constantly changing images. Two large screens in the center are labeled "TeeVee" and "Not Yet TeeVee." Immediately in front of the monitor bank sits a triumvirate of potentates. In the middle is the quarterback of the team, Director Terry Lingner. To his left sits Producer Greg Oldham, to his right, Technical Director Steve Feinberg. Hovering behind them, Coordinating Producer Hallas acts as quality control inspector. Together the foursome dictate how the show will look in your home.
Lingner's eyes dart from one screen to another. He chides his cameramen, insists on graphics changes, jokes with his video replay team, but never takes his eye off the bank of screens. Oldham, who is responsible for the creative direction of the program, makes sure that the story lines of the show are followed as the race develops. Today's program focuses on the year-end WSC points battle between Dyson teammates Butch Leitzinger, James Weaver and Elliott Forbes -Robinson. Feinberg, the effects guy, makes sure the program looks right, controlling dissolves, wipes and stats punched up by research techies in the back of the trailer.
In a separate room at the rear of the unit, a foursome hunches over videotape screens, taping and logging film from every camera position in the event that Oldham or Lingner should call for a replay. In the tail of the trailer, a crew member monitors and equalizes the strength of disparate video feeds so that they all look alike onscreen. In the nose of the trailer, in the wildly complex audio booth, a sound technician mixes and matches the noise levels of the broadcast. Connected to all these outposts, Lingner is constantly barking commands to keep a flatline trace on the audio-video mix. He also stays in constant touch with his camera operators. When one of them allows a shot of a concrete pit wall to escape on live "TeeVee," he gets positively apoplectic, shouting into his headset mike, "Hey 11, what the hell are you doin' out there? That just went out. Focus on something, will ya!"
In another permanently anchored doublewide trailer adjacent to the NEP 18 wheeler, the announce crew sits caged inside a windowless, viewless cubicle, looking intently at the screen image before them. Now you might think that a good view of the track would be essential to the announce crew, but it's just the opposite. If they can see out the window, they tend to talk about what they observe, rather than what the director is showing on the screen. So Speedvision goes to great lengths to isolate their announcers in the booth. As Hallas says, "we like to keep them focused on the screen." To that end, roadies tape up the windows of the trailer, insulate the walls with sound deadening, and generally act like they're putting a trio of parakeets under the hood for the night.
As Coordinating Producer, Hallas is responsible for selecting the "talent." This weekend, he's chosen Jeremy Dale and Gary Lee, augmented by Dorsey Schroeder, who is available thanks to the conclusion of his Trans-Am commitments. In the pits, Hallas looks to Calvin Fish and Greg Creamer for roving expertise. Together, the talent functions as a cohesive unit, familiar not only with the SportsCar terrain, but each other as well.
At the other end of the doublewide housing the talent, a pair of remote cam operators cue their information into the mainstream through Lingner's mental switching block. Next to them sits a computer timing and scoring operator who feeds instantaneous standings to the situation room, where Producer Oldham keeps one eye on the running order, the other on the monitor bank. If gaps through the field begin to widen or tighten, Oldham informs Lingner of the changes.
The Ebb and Flow
The focus of the broadcast ebbs and flows based on the info derived from timing and scoring. If there's a good battle going on for ninth and tenth, Lingner will search it out. Unlike the major networks' slavish commitment to following the leader, Speedvision is sworn to track down the best racing in the field. As Hallas says, "Our mission statement is to show the most compelling racing. We don't follow the leader unless they're involved in a good battle. Once we've established the lead, we move around. We look for points battles. We try and give everyone a little bit of exposure."
Because of the three-hour FIA GT race which preceded this WSC event, the SportsCar finale has been shortened to I hour and 45 minutes from its scheduled run of two hours. The organizers seem to have forgotten that last night's shift to Standard Time knocked the day's schedule back an hour. Thus, the race winds down in the gathering dusk, causing Lee, Dale and Schroeder to refer to the blinding light of the setting sun. Thanks to the magic of F1.2 lens technology, however, the track shots still look bright and clear, as though shot in midday sun. As Butch Leitzinger's Dyson R&S Mark III wins the race and the WSC title, Lingner throws the mike to Calvin Fish in the winner's circle. Associate Director Randy Fishman announces in stentorian tones, "Three Minutes to Title Roll!" as Fish interviews a giddy Leitzinger.
As the credits roll, Lingner jubilantly rises to his feet for the first time in three hours, and high-fives Producer Oldham and Tech Director Feinberg. This crew's been trapped inside their submarine too long, and a call in port never looked better. As I shove open the airlock door, I'm amazed to find it almost completely dark outside out there in the real world. Immersed inside the bright cocoon of TeeVee, I have lost track of time and place. On those 64 screens in front of me, aperture manipulation has superseded reality. For 14 million viewers, Speedvision has transformed Laguna Seca's dark landscape into white heat.
What's On, How to Get It
There was nothing blurred about Roger Werner's vision when he launched Speedvision in December of 1995. Werner had molded ESPN into the original racer's network before he moved on to other cable projects. By the time ESPN swerved off the racing line and shot up the escape road to stick and ball land, Werner had bailed out of the cockpit.
It wasn't long before he resurfaced in the Speedvision pits, however, ready to wave the checkered flag ESPN had dropped. With 14 million regular viewers, Speedvision is gathering momentum at a land speed record clip. Dedicated racing buffs, transportation addicts and vintage historians can now get their motor fix 24 hours a day, everyday. Speedvision dedicates 60 percent of its coverage to cars, the rest to boats, planes and motorcycles. The magnetic programming mix is calculated to attract SCI readers like iron filings to a horseshoe magnet. One look at Speedvision, and you're hooked for life.
The only problem lies in trying to find the hook. If you check into most any hotel in America, you can channel surf till you melt the remote without stumbling on Speedvision. It's even more elusive than ESPN2, which puts it right up there with such reported sightings as The Food Network and CourtTV Most of the problem lies with the morons of the Cable Cabal, who have either never heard of the network, or resolved not to carry it in our lifetime. In the SF Bay Area, for example, Speedvision is all but unavailable through cable "providers" who answer phone inquiries with a bemused "Speed what?..."
Lingner's eyes dart from one screen to another. He chides his cameramen, insists on graphics changes, jokes with his video replay team, but never takes his eye off the bank of screens. Oldham, who is responsible for the creative direction of the program, makes sure that the story lines of the show are followed as the race develops. Today's program focuses on the year-end WSC points battle between Dyson teammates Butch Leitzinger, James Weaver and Elliott Forbes -Robinson. Feinberg, the effects guy, makes sure the program looks right, controlling dissolves, wipes and stats punched up by research techies in the back of the trailer. 