UFC - Rio de Janeiro
Brasil
After the huge success of the last UFC event in Rio de Janeiro on August 2011, the organization decided to have another UFC event in Rio, few months after the first edition. UFC is BIG in Brazil! Several local and foreign broadcast companies were on location to transmit live.The main TV Broadcasts were hosted by Alfacam Brasil, and two of their OB vans. Alfacam is a big international video-facility company, based in Belgium. They opened their Brazil office last year at the PoloRio Cine&Video in Rio de Janeiro, and are ready for the market in Brazil, and of course their goal, to host the FIFA World-cup 2014 & Olympic games 2016 in Brazil. Alfacam is a company with the capabilities and equipment for these international events, and provided the World-cup soccer & Olympic-games already before with OB-vans and classified people.
But also companies from Brazil are in Rio with their equipment and people, like Brasil Rig, Gabisom, Globo & GloboSat. Both Globosat & Globo brought their own OB-vans. Casablanca Online is delivering all satellite uplink facilities for live but also play-outs , and had 8 uplink trucks on site, to deliver the uplinks for the TV stations.
Foreign
One of the most important parts of this production is communications. Not only intercom between technicians cameramen, etcetera, but also the language. The main spoken language is english. For audio visual professionals to work in an international production like the UFC event, they need to be able to communicate, both in word and writing, English.
Nevertheless, walking on the production floor you also hear Flemish, Dutch & Portuguese. There is a mix of Europeans, Americans and Brazilians working together to produce the UFC event, apart from a few language problems here and there, this goes well because of the basic knowledge of english among the crew. It must be stressed however that it will be a challenge in the future of broadcasting in Brazil.
Event
The show went technically very well, but also the fighters from Brazil did their thing... they won a lot. We can expect the UFC back this year for sure in Rio de Janeiro or another city. These are important times for Broadcasting aligned companies in Brazil. With the 2 big events, the FIFA World-cup 2014 & Olympic games 2016 on our doorstep this UFC event shows that Brazil is technically ready for delivering top quality productions. If all personnel starts speaking and understanding better english there will be a wide market of jobs available for the local people.
mentioned:
UFC
Alfacam Brasil
Casablanca Online
SporTV GloboSAT
Globo TV