SP by Stage Precision tracks Super Bowl
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Central to this endeavour was Stage Precision, whose SP tracking and control solutions played a pivotal role in orchestrating several broadcast firsts during this year's show.
"The scale and complexity of the Super Bowl demanded a bullet-proof solution that could seamlessly integrate across multiple broadcasts and platforms,” recounts Matthew Houstle, director of technology at Silver Spoon. “SP's tracking solutions emerged as the linchpin of our operations, providing us with the precision and reliability we needed to execute our vision.”
Part of the vision was to bring the Super Bowl to a younger audience through the first-ever simulcast of the event on broadcast channel, Nickelodeon. The simulcast would recreate the action of the Super Bowl game in an alternate reality from the SpongeBob SquarePants world of Bikini Bottom, with over three hours of live AR coverage.
Alongside the Nickelodeon broadcast, Silver Spoon handled all AR content and operations for both the CBS Studio shows at the Bellagio and the game broadcast on CBS, utilising a total of 36 Unreal Engine servers and a 32-person on-site crew. This included AR-enhanced touchdown celebrations and mixed reality scorecard signage across several Las Vegas landmarks.
“We had 15 tracked cameras across three shows," elaborates Houstle. "Bringing SP into the fold was essential for streamlining our operations and ensuring seamless integration across all platforms." Key to the management of such a complex project was the development of a unified backend system - a single server infrastructure that could manage the diverse array of cameras and broadcasts.
"SP allowed us to consolidate our infrastructure into a single server, reducing backups across all shows and unifying our engineering team," Houstle explains. "Their software not only facilitated camera tracking but also managed our server failover seamlessly."
Axel Lambrecht, co-founder and solutions director at Stage Precision worked closely with the Silver Spoon team to realise their vision. "Axel and his team went above and beyond our expectations," continues Houstle. "Their expertise and dedication were instrumental in building out an incredible system that was customised to be as comprehensive as possible."
Running all camera tracking data through the unified backend of SP allowed Silver Spoon to craft an innovative server failover system, that not only gave greater visibility of the whole workflow, but also saved on costs.
“Without SP, every render engine for each main camera required a backup server, and this gets expensive on a show of this scale,” explains Houstle. “We wanted to avoid this extra cost, so we built the system with a 50% backup idea going into the project and SP allowed us to set up a camera switching logic so that with a single button press the camera and server could be switched over instantly in case of failure.”
"SP's technology provided us with peace of mind, knowing that we could deliver a flawless broadcast to the largest audience in the world,” confirms Dan Pack, managing director at Silver Spoon.
