DENVER — When the Nuggets and Avalanche play in Denver, fans can now watch their teams from a whole new angle.
Around the start of the new year, Ball Arena installed the first permanent Skycam inside an NBA or NHL arena. The aerial camera technology uses cables rigged up inside the arena to fly around the action.
Skycam is often used for broadcasts at NFL stadiums. It was previously used inside Ball Arena for playoff games but now has a permanent set-up for all games. The technology could also be used during concerts and other events.
Kroenke Sports and Entertainment owns Skycam, the Nuggets, Avalanche, Ball Arena, and the sports network Altitude TV.
“It's changed our production quite a bit,” said Travis Honderd, the director for Avalanche broadcasts on Altitude. “It's a really fun toy, as we started to call it.”
“It just gives an extra great look to the ice—or for the Nuggets, to the basketball court—that the other cameras can't get,” he explained. “With its lens and with its cabling system, it can really shoot almost down on the ice. So it gives us a really cool perspective that the other cameras can't get.”
The Skycam shots are used during Altitude broadcasts and on the in-arena jumbotron.
The controls are in a small suite high above Section 324. A Skycam pilot flies the camera while an operator frames each shot.
“It's like a dance, you know, sometimes he leads, I follow. Sometimes I lead, he follows,” Skycam operator Marcel Lopez told Denver7. “I’m able to, you know, spin the camera around 360. We get crowd shots, anything that looks pretty in the arena.”
Skycam uses a virtual map that detects obstacles and limits where it can fly to prevent collisions.
“I have, like, a ramp here to prevent me from going into the stands,” Skycam pilot Jason Ramsumair explained. “Safety is number one. When you're flying, you're always concerned about safety.”
Even though the Skycam set-up is permanently inside the arena, constant checks and maintenance are still conducted.
Skycam Engineer in Charge Eric Knight took Denver7 up into the Ball Arena catwalks to show how the camera is rigged.
Soon, the team will add augmented reality graphics onto Skycam shots, which jump off the screen.
“I know of a couple of NHL teams that are now talking to their teams and bosses, saying, ‘Hey, we want Skycam. We're seeing it in Denver. We're seeing what it can do.’ So it's getting other teams around the league excited about it,” said Honderd.
The people behind the camera say the sky’s the limit for what it can do.
“I think we're just scratching the surface on what we can do with it and what we can catch on Skycam that some of the other cameras can't get,” said Honderd. “You don't want to use it too much. Any new toy you get, you don't want to overuse it. So we're still figuring that out as we go, but we're so happy to have it.”
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