The graphic themes within 2013 edition are till made by the Graphics Department RAI Milan
The Graphics Department RAI Milan is headed by Marco Denna, head of post production video, graphics and RVM. In his team operate Silvano Isola, Maddalena Galliani,
Francesca Campagnoli and "recent purchases Patrizio Ranzani and Sergio Maffio, videographers term. The team also includes Massimo Bergonti that takes care of "the hardware" for the graphics.
Among the operators who follow sports programs on Rai Sport 1 and 2 are Carlo Bonacossa for the design and coordination of live graphics Major Events such as the Beijing and London Olympic Games, the Paralympic Winter Games in Vancouver, the World and European Cup, the Athletics in Berlin, Barcelona, skiing in Val di Fiemme.
For Giro d'Italia are involved Adriano Longo, who oversaw the design and implementation of 3D maps (2003-2012) and Corrado Traverso involved in the conception and the graphic design of Giro d'Italia (2010-2012) and customization of graphics themes for the edition Tour of Italy 2013.
Corrado Traverso tells us:
"For the" Giro" many things need to be optimized near the start, but for twenty days, under a lot of stress, in many remote locations, live for many hours, in the sun, the rain and the wind, in the mountains, the plains and in the city, everything has to work at full speed.
I've been working within the Department of Graphics of RAI Milan for ten years following the Giro, but strangely not on a bike!
What was going on in the past years? What was the process of production? What the needs of graphics and titling? The first year I watched the old cassettes on the history of the Giro, to understand what it was for, what kind of caption, the slmall flags, the missing km to the finish, what was missing in the end, the rankings of the various races internal the Giro and all useful data. Then I tried to identify them with different colors. Then I asked the director Nazareno Balani to specify his needs what was needed, for example, captions etc for certain skills.
Other demands were made because of the different graphics themes contained in the Giro, up to eight as "Preview Giro", "Tour Live", and many others, and each needed coherent customizing. In the past these signature graphics themes were about thirty seconds long, this year they were much shorter.
After that, each time, the music consultant was asked to find or create from scratch the music suited to the "quicktime" sample of the theme. After completion, the entire graphics plant was exported to EDB, European Broadcast Development, graphic workstations, in the form of guidelines for the playout during the Giro."
EBD (http://www.ebdonline.tv/ebd/) is a very important company in the area of digital media, with headquarters in Cologno Monzese, active on various branches of broadcast. Their role in Giro d'Italia this year is concerned with airing all graphics contents, but not in the creation itself of such, since this year they were commissioned by RCS Sport (the rights owner) to an external company, "Zampe Diverse".
Traverso continues: "Some graphics contributions have always been aired using BLT machines and frame synchronizers, so not re-calculated but transmitted straight from Digital Betacam, or IMX, tapes or loaded on BLT hard discs. Sometimes for the transitions a TGA sequence was created and then loaded on the memory of the video mixer to be used during play-out.
Then a lot of needs might arise on the field, such as when new captions were requested by RAI Sport. They were created in RAI production centre and then sent in ftp or email.
Giro d'Italia in practice begins long before the race itself, with a long previous preparation, to the actual bicycle races.
This year, the arrangements were different than in the past, RCS Sport was directly in charge of the production of all the graphics on the air. RAI was engaged in the creation of RAI Sport signature themes like "Giro Notte", "Anteprima Giro" and many more.
Caption for the picture
The example of Giro d'Italia is a classic model of operational intervention of the Department of Graphics at RAI Milan as it was carried on for ten years taking care of titling signature themes, captions, plans maps, and altimetry in 3D.
The team is composed of (left to right): Adriano Longo, Silvano Isola, Francesca Campagnoli, Maddalena Galliani, Corrado Traverso, Carlo Bonacossa.
