FEED: Lasse, you’re head of technology at a company continuously producing esports events. What tools do you wish you had that would make your job easier?
LASSE KEMPF: There are exciting new protocols that allow you to do point-to-point connections really effectively over the open internet, but the tools for implementation are still very young. When you’re putting together this kind of remote production, you have video feeds going back and forth, with talkback, and all sorts of things.While getting that up and running is doable, it’s tricky.You must remember that the people who need to set these up at home are on-screen talent.When we send remote cameras to them, there’s no simple, easy way of setting them up on public internet.You have to do someVPN tunnels and use Blackmagic gear connected via HDMI.We chose small Sony DSLR cameras, just because they had a really good automatic function. The technology exists, and you can do a lot of great things, but having tools available for end users that are simple to use is probably the thinking most lacking currently. CAMERON REED: Lasse brings up an important point. It’s not just that the talent are not technical people – they shouldn’t be. It would drive me crazy, even as a director, if I had too much technical stuff to set up at home. In esports, it’s even more important there’s no extra work for the players on our behalf. Before
a match, a player has things he or she needs to be doing – focusing on strategies and mentally preparing. They can’t be plugging in cameras. ANNA LOCKWOOD: I would be interested to hear from Lasse how BLASTTV produces different kinds of games, and what you do differently based on each specific esport? LASSE KEMPF: We’ve done Counter Strike, Dota andValorant. Fortunately, those are all five-on-five, PC-based games, which makes it a little simpler. From a tech perspective, there’s not usually a big difference. What it comes down to is getting access to the game world.We rely on clients from the game developers to let us observe the action, get the feed, data and statistics all out for broadcast. CS: GO, for example, is a heavily community-driven game, so we get a lot of access to feeds and can make our own graphics and overlays. But there are console titles where it’s difficult to get that data out, which affects how much extra we can do. It’s also really important that the people doing the show also love the
particular sport they’re producing. We might have different people doing Counter Strike than Dota.We want people who know and love the game and will be able to give the viewer the experience they really want. CAMERON REED: How do we see these techniques, developed over the last year as crisis management, becoming permanent? LASSE KEMPF: It’s always more fun to have players on-site and be able to use super-slow cameras and cool effects. But I think, especially for a qualifier or smaller shows, you’ll see higher-quality production, because now it’s been proven it can be done. There’s a track record for being able to do this, and that’s not going back.We’ve been using a lot of these tricks for a long time, but the industry as a whole will definitely follow. If we find that the best observer for a certain game is based far away, they can just remote in.The observer could be in LA and the production is here in Denmark. It’s opened our eyes. Previously, you had a sentiment of, if they’re not here, it’s not gonna work.
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