Live From Daytona 500: Game Creek Video FX Revs Up for 11th ‘Great American Race’

Unit passes on Super Bowl duties to maintain streak at Daytona

Game Creek Video is once again on hand for Fox Sports at the Daytona 500, and this year marks the 11th straight that Game Creek’s FX production unit has been at the center of the Fox operation. It also marks the first time since 2008 that FX was not at the center of Fox Sports Super Bowl operations; this year, Game Creek’s Encore unit handled those duties in Houston a few weeks back.

The replay area inside Game Creek Video’s FX A unit will be busy for the next few months handling Fox NASCAR coverage.

“It’s a good thing that these trucks didn’t have to come from the Super Bowl. They could be at our shop for a week or two where our team could flock to them and get everything ready to go,” says Mike Copeland, engineer in charge for FX, Game Creek Video. “Going from a Super Bowl, which we did three times, to here was always a struggle.”

Much of that struggle was simply a result of the Daytona 500’s being basically the Super Bowl of NASCAR. And going from one massive Super Bowl-level production to another is hard enough, let alone when the events share the same technical facilities.

“We have had a lot of good comments about how well prepared we are for this and how it has been as good as it has ever been,” says Copeland.

The Game Creek presence at the race comprises FX A, B, and D units; Edit 1 and 2; and a Robo trailer. The two Edit units and the Robo were deployed for the Super Bowl and made the trip to Daytona directly from Houston.

Edit 1 has four edit suites and three Avid suites and handles editing of racing radios. Edit 2 has additional technologies, and the Robo trailer is home to the robotic cameras. The robo cameras are an integral part of the race-day production, featuring pan-and-tilt heads that control cameras located along the race wall, pit road, and the Hollywood Hotel, which is located on the infield and hosts all Fox studio operations.

From left: Anthony Marshall, Chris Fuydal, Tim Collins, and Richard Glandorf will be operating robotic cameras from inside Game Creek’s Robo trailer.

According to Richard Glandorf, director of field operations, Robovision, seven operators will be in the trailer for the big race. Four or five of them will be on the front bench doing normal camera operation of cameras on the track.

“The other two or three operators will bounce between the studio show and the track cameras,” says Glandorf.

The key to the robotic systems is the speed of the camera head, because the cameras are located much more closely to the cars speeding around the track at upwards of 200 mph. Glandorf notes that feature as one of the competitive advantages of the Robovision heads: they have been designed with speed in mind.

“When you are panning those cameras on the racetrack wall,” he says, “you need to be able to keep up.”