High-tack telly

By GREG DIXON

You might like to know that George Johns has a new seagull record. For 4min 28sec last week the yacht
racing cameraman filmed one of the ubiquitous seabirds, his high-tech, remote-controlled camera tracking it as it circled over the sloppy, choppy soup of the Hauraki Gulf.

His previous best time was about half that, he tells me as he scoffs chips and relaxes while TVNZ's camera chase boat, Into The Blue, heads home after another day without a Louis Vuitton Cup race being sailed.

To the landlubber, this might seem a bizarre use for the multi-million dollar resources floating there and packed into rooms at TVNZ's IBC, the host broadcast centre back in downtown Auckland.

But it's the sort of thing Johns must do while waiting, as we did for three hours this day, for the winds to drop under 19 knots so that the race — already cancelled twice — can get under way. While there's still a chance the Flash Harry yachts might race, Johns must provide live images for TVNZ and international networks taking cup coverage. Commentators must have something to talk over while they and everyone else waits for the action to start.

"It's the hardest part of the job," the 36-year-old says. "If there's been a postponement for too little or too much wind we've got to shoot what there is: other boats,
people fishing, dogs, girls in bikinis, seagulls. With the weather being what it is at this time of year, there have been more than a few days like this."

Which has meant a lot of seagull footage and close-ups of spectator craft. This day these include Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison's enormous Katana, a sort of Bond movie leftover featuring — and this an odd sight at sea — a basketball hoop near the stern (Yes, Mr Bond, I'm going to slam dunk you to death).

But this isn't what Johns, a yachting
specialist who has covered three America's Cups, is out here for.

During the early rounds of the Louis Vuitton, Into The Blue, a helicopter and self-cleaning cameras onboard the racing yachts beam back live pictures to the IBC via the ANZ Tower, and then on to the world.

When the racing actually gets under way, Into The Blue is the closest boat to the yachts as it moves in to capture close-up action shots of these sleek, creaky monsters as they tack and jibe towards victory or defeat.

This proximity is undoubtedly why someone paid $16,000 for a day on Into The Blue at the recent fundraising auction for Team New Zealand. "And that doesn't include lunch," Johns tells me with a grin.

It has plenty of grunt, has Into The Blue. Her owner and skipper, Peter Behrent, who has chartered the boat to TVNZ for the duration of the cup, tells me the $900,000 power cat has twin 315-horsepower engines. These are barely needed as the boat chuffs up and down the course with the yachts.

It is the cameras on the bow and the stern that do the real business. Worth $1.03 million each ("they tripled the value of the boat," Johns laughs), these ball-shaped Gyron cameras are able to move freely around 360 degrees and are fitted with powerful zoom lenses. Attached to large-ish titanium tube rigs, they look for all the world like giant eyeballs atop jungle gyms.

During the racing (or filming seagulls), Johns sits on the boat's top deck in a specially made mini-broadcast booth staring at monitors and moving the cameras with what look like oversized videogame controllers.

It sounds easy, it isn't. Johns must be in communication with the director back at the IBC, Into The Blue's skipper and be aware of where the helicopter (which also has a Gyron) is, while at the same time tracking the racing yachts, picking and framing shots and operating the remote control. And all this, without a break, for three hours or more.

"It's like playing a virtual chess game: you have to remember where everyone is. You've got to have a sixth sense about what the boats are going to do. I'm still practising and I've been a cameraman for 16 years and working with these cameras for 10."

Johns is one of the best there is at filming yacht racing, says Denis Harvey, TVNZ's head of production and sport, the following day. "What other camera operator has to deal with what George does? And for this event we've had to find half a dozen cameramen who can do that, not just one. And it's day after day for, potentially, 60 race days."

The charming Harvey's also a veteran. This is his fourth cup and he's been in charge of covering yachting at the Atlanta and Sydney, Olympics, helping TVNZ to become the pre-eminent broadcaster in the sport.

"Other than multi-discipline events like the Olympics, I think doing sailing at this level on television is probably the most technically difficult of any sports [coverage] in the world," Harvey says. "You're in the worst possible environment in terms of weather and salt water. You don't have a defined field of play, it's shifting constantly. And there is nothing connected to a camera.

"Everything is in the ether. I wake up at night thinking, 'God, nothing's connected to anything'. The whole event floats in the air."

TVNZ is contracted to provide facilities, footage and equipment to international broadcasters here to follow their country's entry in the regatta.

Using often custom-built gear and
computer software, the camera operators and IBC generate pictures and graphics in a series of rabbit-warren studios next door to TVNZ's main building on Hobson St.

It takes a huge cast. Come the semifinals, Harvey's host broadcast team will peak at 76 people so that both the day's races will be covered. During America's Cup racing, the complexity of coverage increases threefold.

Putting it together has the feel of a church meeting. That's the mood in Production
Control Room One on the morning after that cancelled race, when Mascalzone Latino and Prada are finally sailing. In this darkened room, with its bank of monitors, hardly a word is heard. Mostly it's the sounds of creaking boats and shouting sailors with the studio's director periodically calling out shot changes.

On one small screen, I can see what Johns is seeing today. He's pulling in close, pulling out, helping to tell the story of this race. And, thankfully, there's not a seagull in sight.

nzherald.co.nz/americascup

Racing schedule, results and standings