BBC Resources supports Winter Olympics

BBC Resources is setting up camp around the mountains of Turin to support coverage of the world’s biggest festival of winter sports, which takes place between February 10-26 2006.
The 20th Games are set to receive more television coverage than ever before, with the BBC promising 100 hours over the 17-day event and 500 hours of programmes for digital viewers.
Almost 30 staff from across the BBC Resources businesses will be working in London and Turin to support coverage. This includes cameramen, sound supervisors, vision engineers, engineering managers, editors and riggers from BBC Studios, BBC Outside Broadcasts and BBC Post Production.
BBC Resources is supporting three different BBC production areas, the Broadcast Mountain Centre in Sestriere (BMC), the International Broadcast Centre (IBC) in Turin, plus Television Centre in London.
BBC Resources is equipping a four camera presentation studio at the BMC. It is the first time that BBC Sport will have a studio at the Winter Olympics, bringing coverage from the heart of the event and providing a breathtaking Italian, snow-clad mountain back drop. The BMC will also house a production control desk and three edit areas.
BBC Outside Broadcasts, part of BBC Resources, will also provide single camera units to deliver coverage from the sporting events. It will also manage two permanent presentation positions inside the Palavela Skating arena and at the Pinerolo Palaghiaccio Curling venue.
Both the outside broadcast feeds and the studio output will feed into the IBC, which has a circuit switching area and one editing area.
The Studio 5 gallery at Television Centre is the final mixing point for the programmes, where the Programme Editor and Director are situated. There will also be a booth for live Interactive commentary on Nordic Sports. Most of the main event editing will take place in London. BBC Post Production editors are also supporting BBC Sport’s new image enhancement - StroMotion, developed in partnership with Dartfish. It creates stunning trajectory video footage, revealing the evolution of an athlete's movement, technique, execution and tactics over space and time.
BBC Outside Broadcasts’ Lead Engineering Manager Adrian Kingston said: “We are working with BBC Sport to bring more viewer involvement and choice to the games than ever before. With extended hours of coverage and extra events, plus presentation from the curling at Palaghiaccio, skating at Palavela and studio presentation from the Alpine Skiing Centre in Sestriere – it’s a first for the Winter Olympic Games.”
Paul Mason, BBC Resources’ Chief Technical Coordinator said: “The standard EBU coverage is 4:3, but we’ve gone to great lengths to deliver 16:9 coverage wherever possible, by down-converting the high definition pictures, so viewers can enjoy the full breadth of the games in wide screen.”
Around 2,500 international athletes will compete in the Winter Olympics in traditional events such as figure skating and alpine skiing, as well as the more extreme sports like snowboarding, the luge and skeleton.
There will be daily live television coverage, plus an evening highlights programme. It is the first time in 12 years that the UK will be in the same time zone, so audiences can enjoy the action as it happens in prime time.
Coverage will start on BBC Two and Interactive Channels on February 10.
(GB)