An NC crew covered the Royal Canadian Henley Regatta rowing event in St. Catharines, Aug 10-13.
This summer, a crew of students in Niagara College’s Broadcasting Radio Television and Film production (BRTF) program had an extra-oar-dinary experience.
Students produced the livestream of the Royal Canadian Henley Regatta rowing finals in St. Catharines, August 10 to 13. Five second-and-third-year students, led by Dutch VandenBerg, BRTF Program Coordinator, and Parween Taheri (BRTF 2022) newly hired Community Broadcasting Liaison, helped livestream the local sporting event.
Taheri describes the job as a ‘trial run’ for the World Rowing Championship in St. Catharines, August 18-25, 2024, for which NC will oversee production design, all livestreaming, broadcast coverage and technical logistics.
“This is a great opportunity for us in advance of the rowing worlds in 2024 to gain more experience and to test of some our ideas and production processes,” said Dutch Vandenberg, BRTF Program Coordinator.
This August, the BRTF crew captured the races (which stretched a two-kilometer course) remotely from a control room on the island. The crew manually controlled seven robotic cameras some of which included high end Birddog cameras, which were strategically mounted across the island and at the start line and finish line via fiber connections.
Their work included incorporating commentary from Stephen Clark who announced the finals races.
“The students did an incredible job,” said Taheri. “Besides myself, none of the students have covered a rowing event before. They created and integrated graphics and learned how to sequence shots based on the camera coverage we had. Many of them walked away learning many roles they had never tried before.”
The Birddog robotic cameras – and other equipment used – were purchased by NC for the N22 Canada Summer Games in which the College delivered over 1,000 hours of live Games coverage.
NC will partner with many of the N22 Canada Games sport and event facilitators for the 2024 World Rowing Championship.
“Sport Niagara was formed out the N22 Summer Games as a legacy entity that will manage these types of events in Niagara moving forward,” explained Vandenberg.
Like the Canada Games, NC students and alumni will take part in the world championships in an experiential learning capacity. Taheri and students in the BRTF program are taking lessons learned and looking ahead to 2024.
“We hope to bring more cameras and fan-integration amongst other elements of production value for the 2024 event.”
The broadcasting team will leverage the 140th Henley Regatta next summer as another chance to prepare for the world championship.
