Fremont, CA, USA -- Blackmagic Design today announced that the Savannah Bananas professional baseball team uses a live production workflow featuring eight Blackmagic URSA Broadcast G2 cameras and an ATEM Constellation 8K live production switcher as part of its broadcasting and streaming setup, helping to bring the team’s exciting style, showstopping performances and special events to fans worldwide.
Founded in 2016, the Georgia based Savannah Bananas are known for their unique brand of “Banana Ball,” a fast paced version of baseball with new rules, high entertainment, choreographed dances, and distinctive player stunts. Each game offers a one of a kind, energetic, fan focused experience to attendees and viewers around the globe. To help handle the team’s rapidly growing video needs and viral success, the Savannah Bananas turned to Blackmagic Design products.
According to the team’s Broadcast Engineer Griffin Ellis, the production team began to face new challenges as the organization grew. Realizing the need for broadcast style cameras, they upgraded to eight URSA Broadcast G2s, which capture everything from the games’ broadcasts for TV networks and streaming channels, including the team’s Banana Ball YouTube channel, to highlight reels posted to YouTube and social media. The team also upgraded from the ATEM Television Studio live production switcher to the ATEM Constellation 8K for its additional inputs and features, pairing it with an ATEM 2 M/E Advanced Panel 30 for control.
“I had always been intrigued by Blackmagic gear, having seen ATEM switchers used in numerous churches over the years,” said Ellis. “The URSA Broadcast G2 cameras have significantly upped our production value. Even though the organization was growing quickly, we still needed to keep costs down, and Blackmagic Design filled that hole perfectly, keeping things affordable while still allowing us to grow and accommodate the beast of a production that it has become.”
To capture the action at both home and away games, the URSA Broadcast G2s are positioned around the baseball field, feeding into the ATEM Constellation 8K, which sits in a control room. Two of the ATEM’s four M/Es are used for live switching the games’ broadcasts, while another M/E is used as a router for various monitors around the control room and venue. Ellis notes that one of the ATEM Constellation 8K’s most helpful features is SuperSource, which they use extensively for “Mic’d Up” segments, where players wear microphones to share their real time thoughts and reactions during a game.
“The SuperSource feature in the ATEM really pioneered how we do ‘Mic'd Ups’ to show an ISO of the player, as well as the game happening live in action,” said Ellis. “We also use the ATEM Constellation 8K for our videoboard show at [Savannah’s] Grayson Stadium, and we plan to for a long time. With these and other types of on field entertainment, we can offer fans an immersive and entertaining behind the scenes look at the fun.”
The video team also uses ATEM Camera Control Panel for full remote camera control at special events, an UltraStudio 4K Mini capture and playback device for key and fill within the graphics system, four HyperDeck Studio Pro broadcast decks for high resolution recordings of both the clean and dirty feeds, DaVinci Resolve post production software for creating LUTs, and numerous Blackmagic Mini and Micro Converters. Most recently, they added the ATEM Talkback Converter 4K, Mini Converter Optical Fiber 12G-SDI and 3G SFP Optical Module for the team’s 2024-2025 MLB stadium tour. The gear served as a rack mounted fiber converter system to take the camera feeds back to the truck dock and encode back to Savannah from there.
“We love Blackmagic Design products, and they will always be part of our workflow,” Ellis concluded. “They not only help to up our production value while keeping costs down, but they also allow us the flexibility to be creative with our workflows and content.”
About Blackmagic Design
Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com/au
More News
Support USITT
For many 501(c)3 nonprofit organizations, USITT included, donations are a lifeline. We are able to continue to expand our online offerings to our Members and to our industry thanks to Membership dollars and the generosity of our donors.