FIH Champions Trophy Tournament

We were asked by the International Hockey Federation (FIH) to produce player shots for on-screen graphics as part of the broadcast of the Champions Trophy tournament in London.

Sound simple? Here’s the reality…

• Twelve teams of 20 players and coaches had to be shot in specific time windows over two 14 hour days.
• Each player had to be shot four times (home and away kits plus reference shots with name cards).
• The files were then renamed based on team and player details and the images were cut out overnight to provide transparent backgrounds.
• Each cutout was then cropped and re-sized for both head and upper-body shots to fit precise TV graphics templates and sent off to the broadcaster.
• There were also about 30 umpires and officials… and some set up shots with the team captains to promote the tournament…
• The biggest challenge was the tight turnaround. Final graphics files had to delivered within 24 hours of the shots being taken!

That all adds up to quite a technical and logistical challenge.

The FIH needed a seamless service and the broadcast schedule left no room for delays. For time critical jobs like this, we have backups of kit and also stand-by services lined up as appropriate. For this job, given the time constraints and volume of images involved, we had backups of the backups just in case!