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Wednesday, August 13, 2008

The Job I Want At The Olympics

In case you haven’t heard, there is this little event going on over in China right now…

...it’s called the Olympics.  Judging by the gangbuster ratings NBC is collecting, it seems that the once-every-four-years love affair Americans have with perky gymnasts, swimmers with size 17 feet and sports we never see like team handball has flared up again.

I’ve never worked an Olympics, although I certainly have the credentials to do so.  I’ve had friends work in Seoul, Nagano, Lillehammer, Barcelona and others, but never really did the groundwork to get myself in.  I went to the Atlanta Olympics as a spectator in 1996 only to later find out that a guy I had worked with at a station in Orlando was the venue manager for all the equestrian events!  And I actually attended the equestrian events.  The camera technology on display was (at the time) really spectacular.  Rail cams, cablecams, cranes, an early version of the Skycam you see at every NFL game today - this place had it all.

But it all pales in my eyes to what I’m seeing in Beijing.  I was watching the synchronized diving event (synchronized diving?  Since when....nevermind), where two divers plunge off a 10-meter platform and twist and turn in unison on their way to plowing into the water at 35 miles per hour.  One of the shots in this event is a camera that seemingly gets tossed off the top of the tower, tracks the divers perfectly as they fall, and follows them down through the surface of the water, where we see them immediately do a 180 and head up for a well-deserved breath.  Utterly cool.

It wasn’t until I saw the wide shot that I figured out what was going on.

If you watch the event (or any of the platform diving) you’ll see a shot that points from the middle of the pool towards the platform.  Look off to the right of the platform and you’ll see what looks to be a tall, narrow black stripe.  That is the camera track, hidden behind smoked plexiglass.  And sitting next to it, wearing lime-green neoprene gloves, is the camera operator, a burly guy that - LITERALLY - drops the camera down this shaft to follow the descent of the divers.  32 feet per second per second, remember?  Acceleration works on the camera just as it does on the divers.  This guy watches a monitor, and at just the right time lets go of a cable that DROPS THE CAMERA DOWN THE SHAFT.  It’s one of those things that is so simple that it has a wonderful elegance all it’s own.

And, of course, after each dive the camera operator has to haul the camera back up the shaft.  You think gymnasts have good upper-body strength?  I bet they pale in comparison to this guy after two weeks of this.

I’d still like to work an Olympics before I hang up my press pass.  Guess I better start making contacts for Vancouver or London.  Maybe I can be the guy in the green neoprene gloves!

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