“On the Ball
Media Arts students spend their summer eyeing the field”
by Sally Cutler '84
It's a lazy summer evening at the ballpark. You sit back, relax, eat some peanuts and popcorn and watch the Indianapolis Indians Triple-A baseball team take the field. If you happen to miss a great play, no big deal - you can catch it again on the team's new $1.1 million video screen at Victory Field in downtown Indianapolis. And running that screen in its inaugural season is a team of their own made up of Butler media arts department students.
When the Indianapolis Indians obtained their new state-of-the art video screen, they needed qualified people to run the sophisticated equipment but had a limited budget. Chris Herndon, the Indians' director of advertising and the man responsible for "game presentation," talked to other teams that had installed similar systems and learned that some of them were using local college students to work their equipment.
Herndon contacted Butler media arts department producer John Servizzi '00, who quickly found students who were ready to take on the challenge. With 72 home games this season for the Indians, it's no small commitment for the 10-15 students who make up the scoreboard "team" and who are employed by the Indians. Servizzi and Herndon discovered, though, that the students were able to confidently run the equipment and create a satisfying experience for the fans.
The students are responsible for directing the flow of the scoreboard graphics on the 18 by 32 foot screen, the largest high-resolution video screen in minor league baseball. They select and play replays of game highlights, feature sponsor promotions that take place between innings and show plenty of crowd shots - all designed to make the fans feel more a part of the action both on and off the field.
The students also direct a second signal of the game that is fed to television monitors throughout the ballpark, so they're producing both a live television broadcast along with the between-inning antics. As Aaron Pitt, a media arts major from Fishers, Ind., explains, "The most challenging aspect of the job is that it is a live feed. We have to be attentive at all times, even between innings. We also have to make split-second judgment calls on the replays that we show."
According to Servizzi, "The equipment is extremely similar to what we have at the Fairbanks Center on campus, so the students need almost no additional training." Noelle Daming, a media arts major and business minor from Indianapolis, explains, "I really didn't have much experience, since I entered this job just after my freshman year, but I've put into practice many of the concepts I was introduced to in video production (MDA 202), where I had repeatedly operated a camera."
The Indians franchise is pleased with the students' performance, as well. "They're reliable and have lots of energy. They're getting invaluable experience, too," Herndon said. "We're putting on a good show."
While an outing to an Indians game remains a pretty low-key event for most baseball fans, Herndon believes that the technical advantages of the new video screen enhance the experience for the crowd, bringing, as he says, "a new dimension to the fan's experience." A win-win-win situation for the Indians, the media arts students and the fans.
