EPTWhat a week...I was in Atlantic City since Friday Sep 30th helping setup. To kill time on the plane and while it's fresh in my memory I'm going to write about the experience.
Since I work in production this blog will be geared towards that side of things. Overall I was happy with the event - even though we had our fair share of rough spots. First off, we really pushed to plan this event in under 2 months. Alex Conn (ROOTSunDevil) our Senior Operations Manager made sure we went with 4 booths on stage so that players could setup for their games while the current games are being played. This really helped and the players were never rushed to setup. As far as production/presentation - we looked at the how it was done by GSL/Dreamhack/MLG/NASL/IEM/WCG and tried to take the best aspects from each and improve upon them. We experimented a lot this event and definitely have learned a ton about how to make an event like this go smoothly. One thing we had was filler content - which included Top 10's, Interviews and Assorted Promos. These were OK to kill 4-5 minutes here and there but they quickly became repetitive and were not really relevant to what was going on in the event. Still, we didn't want any downtime on our stream (that we could control) so this was the solution we came up with. In my perfect world with infinite budget I'd like to do little player packages about the pro's who are about to play - but this would require flying to them or having them fly to SF - for a 3-5 minutes block of content that isn't re-usable.
That brings me to the picture in picture int he bottom right. We originally were going to only show the casters here - however I think this is an extremely boring shot that no one is interested in seeing. Neha decided to take one of our static cameras and set him up as a roaming camera on stage - giving us a total of 2 stage cameras and one for each player. This gave us a lot more options. We did things like set up split screen shots of the players, get action shots of mouse/keyboard of the players and just get nice shots of the players in their booths. By Day 3 we had the Caesars lighting crew setting the booth lights to the players in- game color and taking the players themselves to full screen during the early game introductions. It was starting to feel like a show.
Something I'd like to get community opinions on is this - after a big epic battle or a player is surprsied by something how would you guys feel about cutting away from gameplay for a 2-3 second full screen camera shot of the player? I think if this is done correctly and not overused it can add a lot to a broadcast. While I'm on this point let me admit that we definitely messed up (twice) by showing a full screen caster/player during an important part of gameplay - this was not intentional. We had given our primary TD a break and had our AD filling in for him. Something else we tried and eventually decided didn't work was setting up mics inside the player booths to get audio from the mouse/keyboard. The response was not great and people thought a PA had left his mic on backstage. Also in regards to the explosion transitions - our director was getting a little frisky and was just having fun with the tricaster presets - we won't be repeating those LoL.
One thing we want to learn from/improve on is the booths themselves - the heat generated from the PC's cause the booths to get quite hot - we setup fans in there and left them open when they were not in use. For the future we might build an exhaust fan into the booth itself. As far as players hearing the casters - players were required to wear headphones with white noise playing from an ipod shuffle.
Our two main ops guys on stage - Ryan Mitchell (Syckness) and Adrian Harris did an awesome job wrangling the players and keeping things running smoothly. Jeff ran the observer computers and everyone was working really well together. Our two translators Susie (LiLSusie) and Sue were amazing - always ready to go and providing the best translations I've heard from Korean pro players. Also a huge thanks to the PA's back there that worked nonstop to keep us running - Ken, Kevin, Mike, Mark, Steve, Clayton, and Matt - apologies if I'm forgetting you.
In fact after the 2nd day we setup a "player practice room/lounge" in the back of CMAX with about 5-6 computers, couches, and a big screen TV streaming the event from up front.
On Thursday, the first day, everyone was ready to go and excited for the opening ceremony. Literally 2 minutes before our countdown clock was at 0 we get word from Ops (Alex Conn) that we are blacklisted on Battle.net and can't play any games. This delayed us about 2 and a half hours. After we got through that delay the rest of the day went smoothly.
Day 2 (Friday) would be a tought day. After a truck crashed into a comcast fiber line in South New Jersey our internet was knocked out and we couldn't stream the show OR play the games. Everyone was scrambling to find a solution - Comcast to their credit sent out a team immediately to the crash site to try to fix the problem. The LiveU units that I actually though were going to do poorly prior to the event ended up saving the day and exposing the world to a very promising eSports personality - Lani Villanueva. Lani and her cameraman Buddy got great interviews and footage from all over the venue - with the type of freedom you could only get from a LiveU backpack type setup. The LiveU backpacks also lead to the impromptu broodwar games with Huk Boxer and a few others. I was completely sold on LiveU after this.
So back to us having no interenet, our interim solution was to setup a satellite receiver on the roof of Caesars and get our internet through that. It worked, we had internet! Unfortunately though it turned out that we had the bandwith to stream but serious latency issues to battle.net east made the game unplayable. After trying a few games with the lag players complained and AConn made the call to not play the games under those conditions. So we had internet that was capable of streaming but we couldn't play games. The solution was to cast some replays from the previous days Open Bracket Qualifier that hadn't been broadcasted but looked promising until our comcast internet was back up and running. Once our internet was back - we had to start playing two games at once on the main stage to catch up to our schedule and a few times we would finish up a series and go into a game 2/3 of a series in progress. This was no ideal but necessary given we had to start the RO32 on Saturday.
Day 4 (Sunday) was our best day yet. We realized pretty quickly that taking the main SC2 stream into the LoL finals was a mistake, we will not repeat that. However we found ourselves with 30 minutes to fill before the LoL finals began and that's when one of our AD's Matt Ryan (coolnazgul) had an idea for a player panel. I quickly ran backstage to see who we could find - I asked the guys in the players lounge who would be willing to do an impromptu panel. MC/Stephano agreed by Select wasn't sure about the whole thing - the original idea was to have Rachel Quirico (who incidentally is a badass and able to handle anything we threw at her) moderate the panel of MC/Stephano but then I saw InControl talking to Anna who has just finished her shift backstage. I asked Jeff if he was willing to moderate an impromptu panel with MC/Stephano and he agreed! At that moment Select decided that he would participate which was great news for us. Within 5 minutes of the idea we had the 4 of them mic'd up on the caster desk with Select translating for MC and Rachel in the audience taking questions. The segment ended up being one of our most successful bits of filler content, MC for President 2050! Having the players interact wtih the fans in a somewhat structures but still laid back environment was great and something we will try to refine and build upon for future events.
On the topic of panels, The LiveOn3 panels we held at Ballys on Thursday night and at CMAX on Saturday night were amazing and really engaged the audiences at the venue and online. djWHEAT Scoots and Slasher hosted guests including David Ting/MC/IdrA/2GD made for some entertaining banter and discussions. The player panel with Idra/White-Ra/Stephano and Huk was also very entertaining to me personally and I'm wondering if the community also enjoyed these?
I'm going to take another second to thank/shout out all the great people I met/worked with this week. Neha Tiwari who directed the show at CMAX killed it from Master Control and was calling it like a boss. All of the IPL staff obviously worked insanely hard, everyone from Errol/AConn/Bennett to Frank/Joshy/Colin. Our shooter/editors Rudy and Paul also were on their feet most of the day getting footage for our future promos and broll. Our shooters at CMAX Alex/Amanda/Pete and Clark did great work. Anna our hostess/MC was a total professional - it was so easy working with her and I'd love to do so again for future events. Derek Brinkman from IGN Prime did an awesome job calling some last second audibles to make the event the best it could be.
Colin and the 01 production shooters were also badass, as was Peter Palm. Obviously the man who had the vision and put all of these events in motion is David Ting.
Our photographers Hugo and Oliver were everywhere and got some really great reaction shots with a ton of emotion. I'm really enjoyed woking with those two and am looking forward to the pictures they put up from IPL3.
I didn't spend much time at Ballys since I was at CMAX all day but I met and got a chance to talk with Mike Zemrose our director over there as well as our 2 TD's and our AD Brian. Those guys picked it up so quickly and ran a fantastic show - Zemrose is one of the few people with Starcraft 2 knowledge and production experience. It was a pleasure working with them.
There were some backstage personell on staff with Caesars that were helping us out throughout the week with audio, lighting and stage direction. These guys were awesome and by Sunday they were intrigued by starcraft and asking me questions about the units/races/players. I overheard one of the guys mention that "the roaches are my favorite...because they spit out acid". These are 35-50 year old stage hands that have never seen the game before this week.
All of the players were great - The SlayerS guys and specifically Boxer just has an aura about him that even the stage hands could sense even without knowing anything about who he was. We tried our best to accomodate the koreans - Adrian ran out and picked up some hand warmers after huk mentioned his hands were cold on our first day. We had drinks/food available for them in the player lounge, and they had plenty of time to get setup and practice in their booth before their games started. As far as the pre-game handshake and the post-game interview - did you guys enjoy that or was that something we could potentially skip? I like that element of the show but I'm not sure if the community shares the same opinions.
I played a (losing) poker session with White-Ra and IdrA (briefly) the last night of the event and I got the chance to hang out with Mr Chae from GomTV who was there checking our the first IGN event. He's extremely smart and I pretty much a true nerd baller. The casters were amazing, djWHEAT and D'apollo worked extremely well together - as did DOA and CatsPajamas. HD and PainUser already know each other very well and can always be counted on for an entertaining cast.
Wow, I wrote way more than I expected to, and I still have ~3 hours left on this flight. We saw Stephano getting on his flight to Orlando this morning at the Philly airport and wished him luck at MLG. Well my laptop has about 40 minutes of juice left, so If you actually got through that thanks for reading!
I'll post some more pictures I took in this thead when I get home in SF later tonight.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/Qz4yG.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/HOlmR.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/CY6ka.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/9eYg6.jpg)
Playing some poker with White-Ra
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ipsuT.jpg)
Special Tactics were engaged
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Jmh6R.jpg)
first iteration of the Live-U Cave later redubbed the LiveU Palace
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/GEDyD.jpg)
AConn and Adrian backstage
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/tGmzm.jpg)
Player Lounge/Practice area backstage at CMAX, Alive/ThorZain/SeleCT
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/DpFFj.jpg)
these were plastered all over the hotel and they were playing our promos on the TV's
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/POCGE.jpg)
there were a good amount of confused casino patrons
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/zWtZV.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/9w66Z.jpg)
Getting that good close up of EG PuMa
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/kgvkY.jpg)
EGHuK in his booth
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/AKkqE.jpg)
LiquidHero and our awesome camera op Alex
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/NXeXe.jpg)
SlayerSRyung
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/bcGOg.jpg)
Interview with the Emperor!
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/XVUaA.jpg)
CMAX stage
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/T7soI.jpg)
Production master control
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/rYdm0.jpg)
Future president of Korea the Boss Toss himself
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/tHKzn.jpg)
Ken getting down on some Karaoke at the Twitch.TV wrap party. There were some epic performances by David Ting/SeleCT/Anna/Temp0/CatZ and a few more
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/YUzBp.jpg)
Crowd shot at CMAX
)
