[MUSIC] Hello. To make the Olympic content reach the audience, three main activities need to be undertaken. First of all, what a television operator requires to offer the Olympics to the audience are the rights to telecast the Olympics? We will explain this aspect in detail during the week number five. The International Olympic Committee sells the rights to broadcast the Olympics on television generally to one television operator per country, in exclusivity. When the television operators get the TV Rights, they have the right to deliver the Olympic games through television in its specific country and in many cases, on the Internet too. For the great majority of the international television broadcasters, a great extent of the images and sounds come from the so-called international signal, which are the television programmes of the Olympics produced by an organization of the International Olympic Committee called Olympic Broadcasting Services, OBS. Olympic Broadcasting Services produces the television programmes of every Olympic competition during the Games. At the same time, a great majority of the national broadcasters send to the Olympics human and technical means: cameras, television production teams, in order to personalize and customize the international signal by offering images and highlights of the national athletes in the different competitions. Every television channel has to program the Olympics in order to make them attractive for the audience. Finally, the programmes have to be delivered through the air, cable, satellite or IP television, that is, through the Internet protocol. Television production refers to the processes and techniques that are carried out to create audiovisual content aimed to be broadcast to wide audiences. Television production acquires a whole new dimension when referring to the Olympics. As Andrew Billings points out, producing an Olympic Games is not small task. In fact, many would argue it is the biggest job within the biggest show on television. First of all, in this module, we will go in-depth into the different roles in television production and we will explore the characteristics of the exterior production. Secondly, we will analyze how does a system of television production work and we will see how different is live editing from postproduction editing. Thirdly, we will focus on the elements that should be taken into account when planning the production. Finally, we will explain the most used types of cameras and how they should be placed. There is a huge amount of staff involved in all the phases of the television production of a sporting mega-event such as the Olympic Games. To illustrate, for the Sochi 2014 Games, the NBC had 1,000 people working in Russia plus 400 workers at the NBC's group complex in Stanford, Connecticut. In the production process, there are many roles. In this part of the lesson, we will review the most important positions. First of all, the producer is the responsible for planning and logistics before the event. Together with the director, they are responsible for overseeing all the elements of the production of an event. We can also find the role of executive producer, who has the responsibilities in terms of financing, scheduling, and negotiating with the sports organization on broadcasting rights, according to Owens. Secondly, the director is responsible for the creative and aesthetic portions of the production, coordinating various elements of the broadcast. He sets the tone and pace of the production and serves as a crew motivator. Moreover, the director must be able to visualize tell the story, to document the event in a way that allows the viewers to feel as if they are part of the action. This is crucial in spotting mega-events such as the Olympics. The director is helped to by the associate director, or, assistant director, who keeps track of the timing and making sure that camera shots, graphics and videotapes are ready for the directors cue, according to Owens. Another essential role in the television production process is the mixer, who working under the instructions from the director, switches between video images using cuts, dissolves, wipes, special effects, animation, and graphics as we will see in detail in a video. The camera operators receive assignments from the director of work to constantly provide the director with the best quality images available for the production, according to Owens. The stage manager is the director's primary representative and contact on the studio floor, in the broadcast booth, or on the field of play. Leaving the aforementioned roles aside, we wish to highlight other positions that are essential in any television production, such as the audio mixer, who is responsible for the final mix: audio levels, balance, and tonal quality of the final production, according to Owens and Millerson, the graphics operator, who operates the character generator to put text and graphics on the television screen, or the VTR operator, who runs tape and machines, monitors audio and video levels, and often operates an auxiliary bus switcher, in order to isolate specific cameras on a video recorder, according to Owens. A great extent of the multi-camera sports productions are conducted outside the studio. Exterior productions provide fundamental advantages, such as the ability to capture the event as it's happening, according to Owens. However, they present challenges such as the weather, the difficulties in controlling the sound and light or the high expenses associated with the production.
