The men behind the broadcast

8/13/08 7:44am Local time, Broadcast Compound

Over the course of the past 3 days, I think I've slept for a total of 12 hours. Work is getting crazy, but I am loving every minute of it and learning so much that I don't mind not getting a lot of sleep. The only thing that's kind of hard for me is when friends call or text me to go out or go sightseeing and I can't because I’m working 16 hour shifts on average. I keep telling them, "After swimming is over, after swimming is over." But hey, story of my life, right? And seeing this level of competition is definitely worth paying attention to every minute of.

For both the finals session yesterday morning and the prelim session last night (it's still weird to say that finals are in the morning), I sat in on the control room and watched the producer and director hard at work. During the live broadcast in the morning, if any single second of any shot was off even the slightest bit, everyone freaked out and started screaming at each other. Things always got resolved, but it's crazy to see how precise these people are and how much teamwork goes into a project like this. I really don't know how they do it day after day after day.

Everyone in the control room talks to like 6 different people at a time. The producer is screaming at everyone, trying to make sure replays and reaction shots are recorded and played back exactly when they need to be. The director is on his headset talking to all of the cameramen, telling them what to shoot and how to shoot it. Then there's a time guy talking to people running the meet about when athlete parades are going to start and when the heats are going to start, all down to the second. There's also a USA Swimming representative in the control room who communicates with Dan and Rowdy in the commentator booth. If Dan and Rowdy need any factual information about swimmers or statistics or anything, all the way down to exactly how much time certain swimmers have in between races if they're in multiple events, they ask Mike Unger, our USA Swimming genius. And if he doesn't know off the top of his head, he finds it out immediately. It's rare to see him not know something, though. There's also a girl who sits in the commentator booth in front of a computer for the same purpose, and a guy who stands with Andrea in her interview box. The precision is incredible.

Although I enjoyed the control room and learned a lot from it, it's not nearly as exciting as being in the mix zone. I'm hopefully going to be in the commentator booth for the day today, so my next stories should be a little more interesting than trying to describe all of the technical, behind-the-scenes stuff. Oh, and of course, Michael Phelps is going for his record 9th gold medal today. Go USA!