by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
The country will get to see Sunday’s game between the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Dallas Cowboys from virtually every angle except from a camera buried in the ground.
Thursday, a crew with Cablecam International started installing the bird’s-eye-view camera that’s becoming increasingly-popular at sporting events all over the world. The California-based company has a contract with FOX and NBC to install the cameras for the network’s nationally-televised games this year. In FOX’s case, that’s usually their 4:15 game (this week’s Jaguars game) and NBC’s Sunday Night Football.
“We use 10,000 feet of cable,” said Vance Clissold, who spent a while Thursday just unraveling cable.
The 10,000 feet of cable are strung across Alltel Stadium in a crisscrossing pattern. The cables, which eventually create two bow-tie-like designs, are anchored just below the stadium’s lights. Clissold said the camera moves on three axis systems — two that are parallel to the field and control the yard-line location of the camera and a third axis that controls the camera’s height.
“I am behind the bench on Sundays and I keep my eye on the camera the whole time,” said Clissold. “A guy sits just below section 410 and runs the whole thing with a joystick. It’s like a video game. We do all the hard work and he gets to have all the fun.”
Clissold said the entire system takes two-and-a-half days to install and involves the use of a single camera that stays about 13 feet off the ground.
“The players could jump and touch it if they wanted to,” he said. “They could throw and kick balls at it, but we ask them not to.”
Clissold explained the key to successfully operating the camera while still producing the desired camera angle is staying behind the ball, whether it’s the quarterback or the kicker. Kickoffs and punts are the most challenging, he said, but the trick is to keep the “V” created by the cables as wide as possible.
The high-tech, high-definition camera system was first used in Alltel during the Super Bowl. Cablecam International also has a contract with NASCAR and has used their camera system in other sporting events such as the Olympics, European and Brazilian soccer and another Super Bowl. This is the fourth season the company has worked with the NFL and most recently provided aerial shots during the MTV awards show last week.
What about a wedding?
“Not yet, but who knows,” said Clissold, who is from Hawaii and spends most of the fall traveling with the company.