SOME RECENT WORK:

We’ve provided OB facilities for:

NITV OFFICIAL OPENING

OB Van, parked 200 metres from the opening ceremony in the Sydney Powerhouse Museum theatre, covering the very first and opening live-to-air opening broadcast of the National Indigenous TV Network.

The Globecast uplink truck carried the feed to the NITV MCR in Alice Springs.

The Kadee tent contained some digital audio fibre interfaces, and our VW van is parked on the left.

NITV FOOTBALL CARNIVALS

From the commentary position in Lismore, for the Koori Knockout.

One of our 55x lenses doing the end-on shot at Lismore

League legend Brad commentates from our camera tower in Brisbane, for the Touch Footy carnival..

Mostly in rural NSW and Queensland

JOB FEATURES:

6-camera coverage plus ENG shooting

Up to 12 hours per day recording of football carnival matches

On-site ingest to disk for rapid editing

Live commentary, replays, scoring and alpha wipes.

Providing additional “unit” amenities for the larger crews; up to 24 crew and volunteers.

Required 1000s of kms travel with on-time arrival, operating in remote locations far away from normal support, coping with climate extremes of heat, storms, dust and humidity

AUSSIE RULES AT ALICE SPRINGS, for NITV

We stop for fuel at an outback roadhouse, on the 6000km return trip to the Alice

Commentary position at the Alice. The dead tree in the background is sacred, and nobody may disturb it. You can see the western Macdonnell ranges in the background.

OB compound at Alice Springs

Our fave team, the living LEGENDS from Yuendumu, captained by the SHERMINATOR himself (with the Mr T hairdo) There is a really cool documentary about these guys. I think you can buy a copy from CAAMA.

Our favourite truckstop roadhouse on the way: Little Topar, near Broken Hill, where beer and diesel are sold at the same counter (of course).

For two years, we’ve provided live-to-tape coverage of a three day Aussie Rules carnival in Alice Springs,

Northern Territory.

Challenges included heat, dust, distance, and long shooting days.

We also provided crew and facilities for a complete on-location live-to-air episode of the weekly Marngrook Footy show. The format is a panel chat and magazine show.

.

The three trucks are used as follows:

Main truck (left):

Direction, scoring, vision, audio and replays

Tender truck (back):

Camera and location equipment storage and preparation.

Third truck:

·                   Production office

·                   Webcast

·                   Editing of ENG material

·                   Ingest to Final Cut Pro

·                   Logging.

About 20 finished hours of material were delivered to NITV by our clients.

FOOTBALL CARNIVAL IN THE TORRES STRAITS

The remotest part of Australia, the Coral Sea, with shallow tropical waters, coral reefs and sand cays. The Torres Strait Islands are scattered between Cape York and New Guinea, and are home to, and traditional property of, the Torres Strait Islanders.

The OB truck, still encrusted in salt, just unloaded from the landing barge on Badu island.

It got a major bath at the local fire hydrant!

Instrument console on one of the light planes used for ferrying in the TV crew. Very ‘70s

Scenery from the footy field.

The truck, parked beside the referee’s building. In the background is our camera tower and the roof of the grandstand (which blew off later during the carnival, due to the Trade Winds going feral on us.

Local dudes loading a dugong on to a trailer for the traditional footy feast.

We supplied a full OB system to Gondwana Productions for an NITV Rugby League broadcast from the Torres Strait Islands (Badu Island).

This job tied our truck up for a whole month, to shoot for only three days!

·       4 days to get it to Cairns by road

·       2 days wait for a ship

·       4 days by cargo ship to Horn Island

·       1 day transfer at Horn.

·       1 day ride by landing barge to Badu Island

·       2 day rig at Badu

·       3 day shoot at Badu

·       1 day barge back to Horn Island

·       7 days by cargo ship to Cairns via Weipa

·       3 days to clear Quarantine at Cairns

·       4 days return via road to Sydney.

All our gear survived the journeys and the continuous salty trade winds and wet weather.

No crew died during the filming.

One unexpected outcome, we got to be centre-spread in the wonderful Truckin’ Life magazine; read more. (I’ll post this soon)

CORPORATE EVENT FOR NEWS LTD

at the Overseas Passenger Terminal

OK, so Mr Murdoch came and gave a cool speech, but I put this one in for the pikkie of the Harbour Bridge.

2^nd UNIT for CANBERRA MOUNTAIN BIKES, SCREENING ON EBU and FOXTEL

We supplied our OB van, 6 cameras and 2.5km of triaxial camera cable to OB Group to cover the top half of a live broadcast of a two-day Mountain bike event, broadcast on Foxtel and the EBU.

This is the upper OB  Compound, nick-named “Pete’s Ridge,” perched half-way up Mt Stromlo.

Digital links (on the tower in the foreground) were provided by Lateral Linking.

The Brindabella Ranges or on the horizon.

Voted the prettiest OB site of the year!

FOOTBALL TALK SHOWS: 

live-to-air from Sydney and Alice Springs, shown on NITV.

LIVE-TO CINEMAS OB:

Here we are at the Entertainment Quarter, setting up for a live broadcast into digital cinemas around the country.

The uplink truck belongs to Sydney Teleport.

As we were shooting only 20m from the trucks, we put the IFB and radio microphone bases on top of the truck, hence the ladder!

OPERA HOUSE CONFERENCE COVERAGE, SCREENING ON BBC WORLD

Six camera live-to-tape shoot in the Concert Hall.

Our compact trucks fit nicely into the two OB Van parking spots inside the loading dock tunnel under the Opera House, allowing for use of the in-house cabling and tie lines, and a tidy, efficient rig, with reduced load-in effort.

CRACKER COMEDY FESTIVAL

shown on Comedy Channel

Live-to-tape from the Enmore Theatre.

Our second year’s coverage of this annual 3-hour comedy event.

2^nd UNIT FOR BATHURST 12- HOUR;

SCREENING ON TEN NETWORK and FOXTEL

This was our third year on top of The Mountain, for OB Group, providing upstream switching of nine cameras, covering most of the mountainous parts of the Mt Panorama track.

This year we got heavily rained upon, but we all managed to stay on air provide uninterrupted coverage in the worst weather conditions any of us have ever seen.

FEDERAL ELECTIONS:

National tally room coverages for Sky News, for last three federal elections.

Ten hours of politics, from the National Tally Room in Canberra.

Live to air hosting and interviews, linked with vision, audio comms and IFB with the Sky Sydney studio.

This was our third Federal Election telecast from the NTR for Sky

HARBOUR BRIDGE WALKS

In 2001 and then in 2007, we supplied a “second unit” truck for Harbour Bridge Walks

The 2001 Walk for Reconciliation (on SBS) was handled by our now-deceased OB-2, a little Mercedes van, which was parked right in the middle of the bridge, on a cold and windy day/

The 2007 75^th Anniversdary of the Bridge, involved us parking beside the South East pylon. Client was BPA and links were by BNC.

Back to home page