ALBUQUERQUE – Welcome to the latest edition of the Ice Wolves Den. Recently I had the opportunity to do play by play for an NA3HL Ice Wolves game and got to work with their amazing production team. This week, we will be featuring that team.
NAHL play by play announcer Jason Thomas says they’re the best crew in the league and they’re mostly high school interns. “Our production staff is amazing. Without them I have no show, it’s everything from camera operators, replays, technical directors, producers, I’ve seen so many people grow. I’ve seen high school kids go to college and get jobs with Reelz Network. They really put the show together, all I do is talk. Everything you’re seeing is from them, I’m very lucky because they make me look better then I really am.” Thomas continued, “It’s all high school interns who volunteer their weekends. I remember being in high school, I didn’t want to give up my weekends, I wanted to go out with my friends. For them to be so committed to this being a potential career, I’m forever grateful, we have a great staff.”
Casey James runs the NA3HL broadcast and is part of the NAHL team and hopes this leads to his dream job, “I want to be an engineer, I want to work on a production truck. Our production is essentially set up like one of those sports production trucks, just kind of in a room.” James said, “There are way too many things that go into a broadcast. If there are 100 things, I’ll remember 99 and when the game starts I’ll remember number 100. We have 5 recorders going for the replays, we have to make sure the audio and video is being sent to NAHLTV, the streaming service. We have to make sure all the microphones work, the cameras are in proper position. It’s so much you have to remember to create the perfect broadcast.”
It’s not just the Ice Wolves broadcast, most NAHL teams bring in their own broadcaster, James says that’s just one more thing to worry about, “We give them their own Internet connection and their own feed of our broadcast and we can control their audio to make sure their audio is perfect. Recently we have them their own monitor so they could see the replays and commentate on those. We really just give them another version of our broadcast so they have all the tools they need to make their broadcast as perfect as possible.”
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