For men's basketball games, students from these classes work on the ESPN+ productions, and sometimes are invited to work on ESPN's linear productions. Spectators are seeing the work of media production students while enjoying the game. “You know some of this just comes with knowing where to place people, assessing their skill and finding roles for them that allow us to help the students learn and get better.”īrackman says that for football games the students handle production for Nippert Stadium's videoboard. “We work with them one-on-one and in our classes to make sure that certain positions are covered and they know what to do before going live,” says Brackman.

We have them shadow positions before they step into certain roles. We obviously try to minimize any issues on air by placing students strategically. “I don’t want to say there is room for error, but there’s room for people to make mistakes because mistakes happen in the real world. “Just by the nature of the number of events there is some room for learning opportunities,” says Brackman. That’s where we got the idea of, ‘Hey, let’s tie these productions to a class and teach while we are doing.’”īrackman says the class also consists of part traditional lecture along with hands-on skill training with production equipment. “It’s really hard to recreate a game or a control room environment without there being some sort of action to follow. “That experiential learning component of the class is very important to us, and making sure students get hands-on learning opportunities with the equipment,” says Brackman. “So in this case, the students have to work on eight ESPN+ productions with me and the athletics department eight times per semester. “In a class like intro to sports media production we require students to work outside events for that experiential learning experience,” says Brackman. Joe Brackman, an assistant professor of multimedia camera production, teaches the introduction to sports media production class with Josh Kramer, an adjunct professor at UC and content producer for ESPN. This allows students to play roles in broadcasting men’s and women’s sports events such as football, basketball, baseball, lacrosse, volleyball and soccer. The sports production classes, including the introductory course and two higher-level courses, operate from a control room based in the press box on the fifth floor of UC’s Nippert Stadium, which is linked to other UC athletic venues Gettler Stadium and the university baseball stadium. Having versatility in what we do means it won't be a boring game for the viewers watching at home.' “We might also have a hand-held camera out on the field to get close-ups of a player’s celebration if they just scored a touchdown. “We have things like a ‘slash camera’ and that might be used for ‘isos’ of the players - isos meaning isolation or a close-up of whoever just made a big play,” explains Harris. You can use that same camera to capture the kick on the other side of the field,” says Harris. “There might be a high end zone camera to capture a kick going into the uprights or from behind the uprights.

“There might be two cameras that have coverage of the actual game itself and that means staying wide so we can capture all the action that is going on and that’s usually the angle that is on television most of the time. “All these camera angles are available so we can have some variability in what we are showing the viewer,” says Harris. For example, cameras for a football game are trained at the 50-yard line, 25-yard line and from the end zone, allowing specific plays to be captured along with shots wide enough to see all players on the field. Harris says he quickly learned that multiple camera angles help tell the story of what’s happening on any sports field, but that it is the director's vision that determines ultimately what a broadcast audience sees during a game.

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