National Sports Journalism Center

ORLANDO — Even as he opened its doors for a visitor, Anthony Bailey admitted that ESPN’s Innovation Lab may not look that impressive on its face.

Basically the size of a spacious den, it’s a room packed with computers, video monitors and an assortment of engineers and technicians peering intently into multiple screens. Imagine a computer geek’s dream family room, complete with a couple of comfy couches no one has time to sit in.

But Bailey, vice president of the sports network’s emerging technology team, has saved this stop for last in showing off ESPN’s work developing new TV tricks for a reason. Because the most impressive part of what the innovation lab does often happens outside these walls.

The innovation lab sits inside ESPN’s Wide World of Sports complex — a shrine to athletics here that annually attracts 250,000 athletes from over 60 different disciplines — which the channel has converted into a giant petrie dish for new broadcasting technologies.

Outfitted with 54 robotic cameras and fiber optic lines connecting their editing facilities to ESPN’s Bristol, Conn. headquarters, the sprawling complex offers a unique opportunity to experiment with capturing any kind of sporting event. There’s the Atlanta Braves spring training games at their 9,500-seat baseball stadium, and the basketball, volleyball and hockey games inside the 44,800-square-foot Jostens Center, the 5,000-seat Milk House arena and the eight multi-purpose Hess Sports Fields, among other facilities.

And the technology currently in the innovation lab’s cross hairs is all about 3-D.

Amid plans to air ESPN’s new 3-D channel on Comcast Cable when it debuts June 11 with World Cup soccer (DirecTV has also agreed to carry the channel), the race is on to train camera operators, producers and directors in the new storytelling techniques demanded by the 3-D space.

“We as sports fans are programmed to see a game from a specific vantage point,” explained Bailey, who divides his time between Orlando and Bristol. “One of the bigger hurdles (in 3-D), is most of our camera positions were developed in the black and white era. In 3-D, you may need different camera positions to present the same game.”

A sample of the 3-D footage already shot by the company proves his point. The most impressive images came from a September 2009 football game between Ohio State and the University of Southern California, with three dimensional images crisp enough to make viewers feel as if they were in the stadium.

As a receiver reached up to grab a touchdown pass onscreen, the instinct rose to grab at the ball yourself – an unconscious reaction to the illusion of an object spinning right before your face. The standard quick edits and fast camera moves favored by modern sports broadcasts were much less effective, confusing the brain as it scrambled to process the fast-moving 3-D images.

Instead, the money shots were the long-held, wide images, allowing the eye to take in wide vistas of fans or the space between the line of scrimmage and the end zone.

Other clips, including test footage shot on a nearby golf course presaging the 3-D coverage of this year’s Masters tournament and images from a Harlem Globetrotters game (where technicians processed 2-D and 3-D images from the same remote truck) were less impressive, mostly because they were filmed in lower resolutions.

Some lessons emerged quickly: cool as graphics can look in 3-D, fewer of them bring greater impact. Zooming in or out too quickly can confuse the eye and ruin the 3-D effect, which comes from melding images shot by two different cameras trained on the same subjects.

And as we watched the images play out on a passive 3-D system – using glasses similar to the ones you get in a movie theater, as opposed to the $150 powered glasses used with active 3-D systems – Bailey noted the scramble to learn the technology and storytelling technique mirrored the industry’s efforts to provide places to see the broadcasts.

“3-D is an entire ecosystem – you need a content provider and distributors, you need to figure out if you have the right digital cable box, the right TV…it’s a lot to pull together,” he said. All of a sudden, ESPN’s plans to offer nearly 100 events on its 3-D channel in a year looks more like a leap of faith than ever.

As we toured the facility earlier this month, technicians were working on EA Virtual Playbook segments for World Cup soccer – using the imaging technology pioneered by the video game company to create the possible plays expected, allowing an analyst filmed in real life to appear inside the virtual action and describe what is happening.

The work to create that display was less exciting, with about a dozen staffers laboring inside several of the complex’s control rooms, melding footage of the actual host on a playing field at the complex with the virtual players generated by EA’s software.

Snuggled inside a side room were the two guys with the job I wanted; paid to play the video game on $10,000 souped-up computers outfitted to capture plays mimicking the events they wanted to show onscreen (a technician explained that it was more realistic and quicker to have the game’s software engine create the play, rather than try to originate it outside of a typical game environment).

Later this month, Bailey expects the innovation lab to park a 3-D-capable remote truck at the complex, allowing ESPN production people to film the many athletic events staged at the complex and refine their approaches.

If it all works the way they hope, viewers won’t notice the effort poured into creating an effortless 3-D display.

“It’s exciting, but it’s a lot of work,” said Bailey, noting that ESPN has been developing 3-D technology since 2005. “(During testing with viewers) it was overwhelming how much people said ‘This is great.’…That’s how we knew we could start a channel.”

Eric Deggans is TV and Media Critic for the St. Petersburg Times and a 1990 graduate of the Indiana University School of Journalism. His work has also appeared in the Washington Post, Village Voice, VIBE magazine, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Chicago Sun-Times and many other publications. He also writes a blog on media, The Feed, at blogs.tampabay.com/media.