Behind The Scenes

Go behind the scenes of shooting College Football Live’s roundtables

The past three weeks, College Football Live Top 20 Roundtables showcased analysts Kirk Herbstreit, David Pollack, Jesse Palmer, Todd Blackledge, Desmond Howard, Robert Smith and Mark Schlabach and their discussions previewing the 2012-2013 season.

Swooping camera angles featuring the analysts — who were surrounded by five screens projecting life-size highlight reels and statistical graphs — set a college football “war room” scene.

The shots even left ESPNers asking, “Where did we tape that?”

The answer: Studio E.

It’s the same studio where NFL Countdown filmed its Super Bowl special, the original blueprint for the College Football Live show. The biggest difference, outside of the set design, was the NFL version focused on two teams; College Football Live wanted to do 20.

“The whole thing came off well because of all of the legwork beforehand,” said director Rich Kvietkus.

“We met with the NFL Countdown director Tom Lucas, ESPN’s Creative Services’ Mike Ruddy, Bob Bates and Danielle Robinson, and a [Facilities] vendor Aspect TV & Film multiple times to ensure coordination. The [analysts] came prepared. The guys are true professionals. We only had one bust [a need for a second take] in a 7-hour block of taping.”

The segments, which ranged from 6 to 8 minutes in length, were taped April 22 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The enhanced set came with its own set of challenges. Typical studio shows position commentators facing the cameras. The roundtable style positioned at least two analysts with their backs to a camera at any given time.

“We produced a live line cut — listening, watching and trying to cut reaction, but in this layout scenario you are going to miss something. That’s why having ISO [isolated shots] backup is huge,” said Kvietkus.

An eight-camera set-up including six hard cameras, a steadycam and a jib were set into place a day beforehand to ensure every angle of the free-flowing conversation could be captured.

Each of the team segments were filmed back-to-back with little interruption, as if they were airing live.

Each hard camera’s footage was dedicated to an isolated shot (ISO) and fully recorded throughout the shoot to ensure any comments or reactions missed could be edited in later.

After airing in segments on College Football Live and SportsCenter, every team’s roundtable will air in continuation on ESPNU, Thursday, May 24 from 7-9 p.m.

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