Sky Sports
Table of Contents
Series / Lead Lighting Director for :
Sky Sports - Football
From almost his very first day as a Freelancer, Richard was lighting studio shows discussing football. Mostly very much was the cliched "..game of two halves…jumpers for goalposts…" and so on, but there was one production that took football very seriously. Very, very, seriously… And Richard lit almost every single broadcast of this for a decade :
Monday Night Football (MNF)
The Studio G version - The O.G.
Sky Sport’s Premier League Flagship production with lead pundits Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher delivering unusually long and serious pre- and post- match coverage. This had three different iterations over Richard’s time, starting with the original Studio G production first lit by Malcolm Reed (lots of MiStrip, Pixellines, and a very unhelpful header). The first of these that Richard would have gone solo on was the day that the original presenters (Keys & Gray) were very abruptly & publicly sacked (a total coincidence!) after tapes their behavior were leaked to the Guardian.
MNF pioneered the use of huge interactive touch-screens for real-time analysis, combined with the incredibly detailed tracking and statistical analysis of every player in every Premier League (PL) match. They also pushed the limits of realtime cutting-edge 3D graphics with individual footage of every PL player (shot on 2 stacked sideways 4k cameras at a time when HD was still a novelty for most people). This was mixed with insightful and fluff-free passionate commentary, to deliver an unprecedented quality - and duration! - of wrap-around analysis before, during, and after just one match. Even when it’s a subject you can have no interest in, you can still tell when its being done better than anywhere else!
On 30th April 2012, MNF had its highest ever viewing figures - and also the then-highest for any sporting event on Sky (until a free-to-air match during Covid) when 4.8 million tuned-in to watch Manchester City defeat Manchester United 1-0 on their way to their first top flight title since 1968 (I had to look that bit up).
The Studio F version - Simply The Best
The upshot of this success was Sky Sports putting their hand in their pocket, and giving the go ahead to move into the studio next door for Sky’s first-ever Million Pound Production.
World-leading technologies stretched the boundaries of what could be achieved in a live studio environment with the Mixed-Reality set from 2013-2017 in Studio F, powerfully led by Senior Director Duncan East and Executive Producer Scott Melvin, who listened to and then demanded - and got - the best out of every single person working on the show, every single time.
The opening Team walkthrough with the Presenter (Ed Chamberlain then later Dave Jones) was particularly challenging technically - starting on a MCU hard up against a green wall, doing a walk all around the Green Screen area weaving in and out of life-size players, then the camera would reveal the real set outside the green area as well, and he would walk across to the main desk, going through the boundary between Real and VR - all in one shot, live. A tricky challenge with the technology of the day and a very low ceiling meaning couldn’t get the lights as far away as was need to avoid inverse square law problems.
Extensive used of dead matt black paint (real) and textures (virtual) were used to conceal the join between the Real and the Virtual, and a little LED strip was also used to hide the join. Trying to keep both the green and black floors free from dust was a nightmare, despite the entire crew being badgered to wear overshoes by the Floor Manager Frankie…the breakthrough came when Richard released what was needed was not trying to make Reality impossibly perfect, but to make the Virtual a bit scruffy. Sales of blue plastic shoes plummeted.
24x Motion Analysis cameras providing 6-D positional data to 3 cameras (first production run of Sony 4300 cameras) each with Ultimatte & Viz-RT graphics to give 360-degree VR and AR virtual set, together with the ability to weave through life-size player line-ups. This early real-time motion tracking system was, to put it mildly, a bit difficult. It required frequent recalibration to keep it tracking smoothly, which involved by walking round the studio waving a magic wand. No, really.
In addition, the VR keying requires significant light levels, but the small size of the studio made clean separation challenging, involving as much finesse with the green material as it did with the lights, particularly the floor. Eventually a real floor was used instead. The low clearance from the studio ceiling (it was a converted warehoues not a purpose-built space) meant that the inverse square law was just not your friend.
After getting that right, whilst simultanously wrestling with an Octopus - the best way to describe the Ultimatte green-screen keying system, all looking good with a stand-in wearing jeans and t-shift, the fun then really started with the Talent in a £2k suits…which have subtly-woven silver sparkly threads, along with super shiny leather shoes…and so on, all of Which…picked-up bouncing green light…! So that’s lighting, set, and wardrobe all coming-down to Richard to address on the day (Sky does not have Art Directors or Wardrobe).
All the light used to even-out the green surfaces then had to be kept from bouncing out into the real set, which could not have the green key’ed out because of the video projectors and screens having …green… football pitches in them. A fully virtual set would been easier, but that would not have given Production a fully-usable environment that could (…and occasionally was..) be switched-to immediately for the next three hours should any of the Virtual elements fail.
If there was one thing that could be guaranteed, with all the bleeding-edge technology deployed across the board, was that something would fail whilst on-air every week. You just had to pray it wasn’t your turn for the gremlins to hit…And if getting all this kit working once wasn’t hard enough, the entire production, with all its temperamental parts had to be rigged from scratch every week, in just one day. An aspect that was a constant point of disbelief by technical visitors from other television networks from around the world.
The Studio 1 version - Time to share…
- TO BE CONTINUED -
- Studio G - The Original
- Studio F - The Best
- Studio 1 - The Longest
Gary Neville’s TV Debut when MNF returned for the start of the next season.
Gary had abruptly left to go and coach Valencia mid-season. This did not go down well with Production, so when he came back from Spain, there was a long pause before he came back to the studio, and right at the end, the viewer’s tweets were substituted with some hilarious but barbed questions…with Gary took manfully took on the chin…
The longest thanks to Covid extending everything. Also thanks to Covid, Richard finally managed to escape.
Other long-running football productions
Premier League :
Saturday Night Football (SNF)
Football First (FF)
Friday Night Football (FNF)
English Football League (EFL)
The next 3 divisions.
With Dave Prutts. Enough said...
Women’s Super League (WSL)
World Cup Qualifiers (WCQ)
Soccer Saturday
The legend that was Jeff Stelling, Paul Merson, and of course... [Chris Kamara](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHyrN9PRioY) (Supervisory LD)
Who else could make 4 hours of watching other people watch football - that you can't - so funny?
Don't worry Richard, neither do most Referees!
Boxing
Ringside
(TBA)
The Gloves are Off
(TBA)
Rugby Lions Tours
(TBA)
F1
(TBA)
The Entire run of The F1 Show
(TBA)