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Dis-Assembly Hall: ESPN camera in right place at right time for capturing falling piece of metal

Game time for Iowa-Indiana in Bloomington was still more than six hours away when ESPN producer Bart Fox performed his routine “fax,” or facilities check, for what was scheduled to be last night’s 9 p.m. ET contest on ESPN.

“Once the crew sets up all the cameras and all the equipment in the truck is ready, our technical director goes camera by camera to make sure everything is set up precisely the way it’s supposed to be,” Fox said. “We then tell the camera operators to ‘lock’ the cameras on a wide shot of the court just in case the unforeseen happens throughout the day. Each camera is being recorded the entire day so if anything happens at any point we can cue it up.”

Lo and behold, something did happen – a metal piece from the Assembly hall ceiling fell, crashing into the seats. No one was injured and the game was postponed to fully assess the situation.

Some fortuitous timing for a transmission check allowed ESPN to capture the falling piece of metal at Assembly Hall in Bloomington, Indiana.
Some fortuitous timing for a transmission check allowed ESPN to capture the falling piece of metal at Assembly Hall in Bloomington, Ind. (ESPN).

“I always tell our guys it’s unlikely we’ll capture anything by doing this but every five years or so we get something,” Fox said. “A few years ago, a player was warming up a couple hours before the game and twisted his ankle and we were rolling on that.”

Once Fox and his team realized what had happened, they “shuttled through the of each angle. To our great fortune, we had it.”

Soon thereafter, it was on SportsCenter and spreading virally.

“It certainly takes a lot of luck to capture moments like this,” Fox said. “But with the terrific crew we have and the ‘just in case’ game plan to always lock off cameras and record them, we were able to document the issue.”

Mike Humes and Rachel Siegal contributed to this post

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