An all-tennis week over three courts in Rome, last May.
The “Cittadella dello sport” at Foro Italico in Rome in May saw the “Internazionali di Tennis”.
Italian TV channel Supertennis (180 on DVB-T and 224 on Sky sat) broadcast non stop from 11.30 AM to late night, airing all matches and related lifestyle at Foro Italico, along with the “VIP Village”, interviews, press conferences; offering an almost round the clock service based on sports but not only, including VIPs, concerts and the “big tennis circus”.
The Cittadella Televisiva is just behind the main court; Eta Beta was the Roman company in charge for the tv shooting from the 3 tennis courts.
Tv activities were headed by Eta Beta group resp Umberto Chiariello, and Ing. Rosario Messina. The two tournaments ATP tour and WTA tour (male and female) are headed by a British company, the Host Broadcaster, wih institutional shootings of every tennis match which the several national broadcasters integrate with proper images.
Sport Cast is the company which runs the Federazione Tennis tv channel and charged the Roman company Eta Beta with all the tv shooting for this event. They used an HD control room, plus recordings of every feed coming from the 3 courts, plus the various commentary locations on the main court, in several journalists boots inside the Tv Compound, the tv village where several editing edit suites were situated too, along with reporters, editorial offices, and support organizations.
Two editing Avid workstation were online with the control room, plus two EVS Super Slow Motions with 8 Replay channels and Supertennis channel was equipped with 8 tv cameras placed in several locations inside the “ground” at Foro Italico: 3 cameras for images in the external studio near the tennis bar side. From here programmes like news and information, talk-shows and alike were created. Among the equipments used, two cameras relayed images from the ground of the village and the central court with Fish-Eye lens on 270 degrees, plus a Jimmy Jib on the tennis bar terrace, plus a fixed camera in the conference room and a very long link radio camera touring the whole village in order to report on the fly interviews.
Sport Cast besides offered the images integration to Italian broadcaster Mediaset through Eta Beta facilities for the final days: here the central court and the finals were shot with 2 long lens cameras at the sides of the mai court, plus a camera dedicated to reporters and on court interviews, the Pit-Reporter .
In this event Eta Beta used their new OB-Track called FlexiVan, a proprietary project, headed by Ing. Rosario Messina for Eta Beta. The new mobile track “Esterna 11 Flexi Van” was equipped with 12 tv cameras placed some 300 mt from the shooting area with signal transport and control on a single fibre cable link.
It's a very different OB-Track from the usual vehicles, for its dimensions, based on six zones expansions, and an inner room of 70 sqm, able to manage up to 36 tv cameras, 12 slow motions and 12 recording systems. At Eta Beta, proudly believe it's a really unique top of the line vehicle, since it's based on two very comfortable control rooms, a bigger one, for double mixing and contemporary airing, as happened in this case for Supertennis and Mediaset.
