The Hidden Tech Behind an NBA Broadcast!

So the NBA players... are not the only talented ones in the arena, as evidenced by this clip that I posted on Twitter a couple days ago that went kind of viral. And what's funny is another one of my replies to someone about how this is a $200,000 lens also kind of went viral. But then there's a bunch of comments from people about how, "Oh, you know, what's the big deal? Like, it's not that hard." "It's just following the ball. Looks pretty easy." No, this is not easy. I shouldn't have to say this, but it is a lot of reps and practice and skill to be able to perfectly track the ball and keep it center frame... and rack focus and zoom in and out at the same time... I would know because I got to try it. And I also got an up-close look at a ton of the other gear and tech that goes into NBA game broadcast feeds that you watch from your couch... And some of it really surprised me. Fun fact: most of the cameras in the arena are Sony boxes. They're called Sony P50s. They have a less than 1-inch type sensor and they only shoot 1080p 60, but they have global shutter and they're $50,000 a pop. But the Canon lenses on these cameras are what's really crazy... This feels like where they got the name Canon from because this lens is insane. This is an 8 to 1000 millimeter lens with insane stabilization... and all the powerful servo motors to be able to move the glass quickly and accurately... It's called the Canon 122 because it's literally 122x optical zoom, which is ridiculous. And then the controls here next to the fluid head are actually... super intuitive. The dial on the right side is zoom and then the handle on the left side is twist to focus. So here you can see I can actually fly in and out with this insane motorized optical zoom really quickly... The fluid head is also really good. I looked it up, by the way, just out of curiosity: $25,000. But even with all this gear, I can't do the crazy level of tracking that these professionals can. But it sure is fun to try. intuitive to learn. Difficult to master. Also fun fact: that little cheat sheet of player faces is given to every broadcast camera operator because they also have a headset on and at any time could get a command from the director telling them to get an ISO shot of a certain player... And they have about two seconds to ID them, find them, zoom in, focus, get the shot, and they're doing this all over the country... for all of the teams. So you could be forgiven for needing a bit of a cheat sheet once in a while. So these cameras are sprinkled around the arena, these Sony P50s with Canon lenses on them. And there's actually a dedicated bank of six of them on these swiveling chairs that are the main cameras that follow the action the whole game. Looks like a pretty cozy setup up here, honestly. In case you're wondering, it's one wide game camera, one tight, two dedicated player ISOs, one coach ISO, and one for mobile vertical broadcast. And this is where those incredibly skilled tracking shots I was talking about earlier... are coming from. Zooming in and out, manual focus, and with the headphones on, taking directions from the broadcast team. So impressive. One of my favorite shots, though, is the tip-off shot. Like the huge, wide, sweeping intro shot at the beginning of every game when it comes down from the top of the arena to the players, it's so iconic, it's even in 2K. And that is done with this, a cable cam! This is another Sony P50, this time with a Canon 14X lens, but then all rigged up onto a Ronin 2 that then wirelessly transmits all of the video and controls to just two people that sit up in the corner of the arena in charge of everything. And this is a serious tag-team effort. So one person is moving the camera around in 3D space through the arena, and the other is controlling the camera itself: zoom, focus, and the direction that it points. So together they can make some pretty sick, sweeping shots. And I actually got to try a few myself, and it really is a team effort. I was listening carefully to what the location person was saying and then combining that with what I thought was a nice camera move... And I thought it looked pretty great! Kind of similar to flying a drone. Super fun, honestly. And then the fact that it's all connected essentially by four carabiners to these cables that go all the way up to the roof... is hilarious to me. So shout out to those carabiners. Then, the stanchion. The stanchion that holds the basketball hoop at each end of the court is also loaded with cameras and microphones from top to bottom. Basically because these here are the closest that you can get cameras and microphones to actually being on the court while they're playing. So this is a combination of some broadcast cameras and some press cameras, and the variety of angles and purposes for all this stuff is massive... There's a cutout at the bottom here for an ultra-wide camera and a floor microphone to pick up the sneaker squeaking and the players trash-talking and complaining to the refs. Then halfway up the stanchion, I spy a red camera and a Sony a9 and a Canon R6 it looks like... And you know what a lot of these shotgun microphones... are. Sennheiser MKH 416s, which I happen to already know is a great microphone. I have a soft spot for them. I'm literally recording with one right now. So then if you look even higher, there's actually two more cameras behind the backboard. One video and one stills camera. The video camera of course is another Sony P50 and Canon lens again for the broadcast. But then on the other side that's actually a Nikon D4... for photos. And so that sort of black tape around the lens is a common trick for minimizing reflections with the backboard glass. But I think my favorite here is the above-the-rim camera, which is, which is literally all the way up above the backboard, above even the shot clock. And that's pointed down... It's great for following shots and getting incredible top-down views of dunks and everything else happening right below the basket. If you ever get to go to a game, just watch that for a few minutes and you'll see it moving quite a bit from a remote-controlled operator as well. Overall, there's easily... 40 to 50 cameras sprinkled all around the arena in all these different places for various things including some other favorites like the referee talking to the scorer's table camera. That's a classic. It's a remote-controlled pivoting Panasonic dome camera and the legendary Steadicam that runs out onto the floor the second a timeout is called. Or anytime there's an opportunity to get onto the floor and get close-ups of players walking away between plays. That dude is always working and constantly in the mix. I think it's easily the most dynamic camera because of how much it moves and... how much it gets close to the players. Crazy enough, that's another Sony P50 box and a Canon 14x lens with this huge rig that distributes most of the load to the operator's waist instead of straight to their back like some other rigs. And if you didn't know, there's also... a ton... of other microphones hidden around the court... as well. Obviously there's a lot of camera angles to be able to cut between and pick up everything. But there's also a lot of sounds to capture too. Stuff like the sound of the ball going through the net... or bouncing off the rim. That's very important... stuff. Like the sneakers squeaking on the floor at various points on the court, the players yelling, talking to each other. You got to get a microphone down there. Of course, the crowd noise is another big one, too. You can never get too much of that... There's a great video by YouTuber Dallas Taylor where he walks around with Ben, the audio engineer, and they show where, like, every single one of these mics is and what they're for. After this, you should totally go watch that video. I'll link it below the like button. I think it's really fun. So it was probably pretty obvious before watching this just intuitively that there are a lot of cameras and microphones and gear... all around the arena. But what you probably don't think about as much is how they bring all of that together. But 200 yards away from the arena... is a pod... of broadcast trucks. Six trucks, specifically in this case, because it's a playoff game. And trust me when I say there is way... more gear in these here trucks than any of the stadiums by a mile... This is where the magic happens. It's where they're taking all of the footage and all of the audio from all these cameras and microphones, the broadcast cameras, the above-the-rim cameras, the backboard cameras, the Steadicam, the slo-mo cameras, the flying cable camera. And everything... gets cut together... in real time. Because you forget, this also has to happen live. So from the chaos of the arena with everything going on, there's a team in those trucks that's in charge of taking it all from all those feeds. Obviously, what's happening on the court, but also the interviews and the commentators and the crowd and the antics off the court, everything... And basically cutting it into a real-time, live, unscripted movie... as it's happening. And I don't know if you realize how hard that is. Like, Hollywood might spend a couple months... of production getting a few minutes of good footage per day, and then a couple more months of post-production just getting it all looking, sounding, feeling just right. But this is 48 minutes of live, unscripted multicam footage being delivered as a finished product as it's happening... So there's engineers white-balancing every camera, making sure they all match with the same color... Dozens of microphones. Okay, that means a live audio mix has to happen to make sure everything sounds right. And you can still hear the commentators, but also appreciate how loud it is in the arena. And there's also live framing and cropping and adjusting and keyframing of zooming in for spotting certain things that are smaller inside of a big frame. And there's a director basically watching all of these feeds, talking to those camera people and deciding which feeds to use and when, basically calling out cuts in real time. It was really cool to watch. And there's also some sick gadgets on these trucks, too, I got to check out. One thing I see that they have a lot of throughout these setups is this controller here, made by EVS... There's a wheel on one side and a smooth lever on the other side. And it is very versatile. So let's say the director wants to cut to a slo-mo replay of something that just happened. Okay, perfect. One of those trucks is a replay truck, and they're getting camera feeds of everything all the time, and they can queue up whatever they want. That wheel on the right lets them scrub through the footage in either direction, and the lever on the left lets them control the playback speed up to full speed, or down to way slower. The source is often up to 180 fps, so it actually becomes very intuitive to scrub to the beginning of the clip. Then when they're getting called to from the director, they can modulate the playback speed super smoothly with this lever, and even slow it down to zero all the way at the bottom if you need to. That's how you see those crisp replays coming in. Getting played exactly at the right moment, just seconds after they actually happen again. Again, intuitive to learn, difficult to master. It was really, really cool seeing all this happen behind the scenes. And it gave me more of an appreciation for, how different this is than what I do. It really is a symphony of live storytelling on the biggest stage for an audience of millions. And if it's done right, if it's done really, really well, you don't even really think about it once. So shout out to NBC and the Spurs for pulling back the curtain on this and letting us see all the gear, and thank you for watching. Catch you in the next one. Peace.