Cleveland Browns Adapt to A Growing Production

Two years ago, the Cleveland Browns started the season with 25 new Daktronics LED displays. This week the Browns wrapped up the second season with the new technology with a stronger production than ever.

Much of the 2014 season was dedicated to getting the show up and running, and becoming comfortable with the new system. However, as the season progressed, the amount of creative content increased exponentially, prompting a re-think of how to go about keeping the Show Control network organized. “We have several different size displays and multiple styles of content. For that we need multiple buttons,” said Rich Hanchette, Motion Graphic Artist, and Show Control Operator for the Browns.

Browns Show Control operators use their individual workspaces during Sunday’s matchup against Pittsburgh.

“The three of us that operate Show Control have different duties, so we decided to break out the Show Control by giving each operator just the buttons they need for a game.”

To accomplish this, Rich created a separate workspace for each of the four user stations and imported only the script buttons that operators would need to push during a game. This cut down on the number of unnecessary buttons to about a third for the game day operators.

Game productions require four Show Control operators to drive the displays throughout the stadium. One operator one controls prompts specific to the play on the field, while another manages the closed-circuit TV network. Rich operates a third workstation cueing various player and team stats at the appropriate time during each drive, and Renee Arko is in charge of the lower fascia sponsored content. “It’s really an act of balancing the workspace and keeping the buttons on the page I look at most of the game” she commented after Sunday’s season finale against the Pittsburgh Steelers. “We also rely heavily on include script buttons, which I find simplifies things a lot on the system”.

Aside from splitting one workspace into three, the crew began utilizing data triggers from the AllSport to handle playback of the penalty flag graphics whenever a flag is thrown by an official, and will look to automate the process even more in the future with game clock triggers. Looking forward to the 2016 season the Browns we will continue to build and enhance the show with more styles of graphics and continued organization of the Show Control workspaces.

Browns fans stay informed with penalty descriptions on ancillary displays each time a flag is thrown.

Stats are designed by Rich, and executed from his workspace on the Show Control network.

This post was written by Adam- Daktronics Field Customer Trainer