We were asked by the International Hockey Federation (FIH) to produce player shots for on-screen graphics as part of the broadcast of the Champions Trophy tournament in London.
Sound simple? Here’s the reality…
Twelve teams of 20 players and coaches had to be shot in specific time windows over two 14 hour days.
Each player had to be shot four times (home and away kits plus reference shots with name cards).
The files were then renamed based on team and player details and the images were cut out overnight to provide transparent backgrounds.
Each cutout was then cropped and re-sized for both head and upper-body shots to fit precise TV graphics templates and sent off to the broadcaster.
There were also about 30 umpires and officials… and some set up shots with the team captains to promote the tournament…
The biggest challenge was the tight turnaround. Final graphics files had to delivered within 24 hours of the shots being taken!
In total we delivered nearly 5,000 assets in 48 hours!
That all adds up to quite a technical and logistical challenge. The FIH needed a seamless service and the broadcast schedule left no room for delays. For time critical jobs like this, we have backups of kit and also stand-by services lined up as appropriate. For this job, given the time constraints and volume of images involved, we had backups of the backups just in case!
