Over 600 boats competed in this year's Oldschool Kingfish Shootout, run by Paul Dozier. It was the first time Oldschool Kingfish Shootout was live-streamed. The weigh-in was located at the Vilano Beach Fishing Pier located in St. Augustine. The tournament was broken into three categories - junior anglers, lady anglers, and men’s anglers. The location of the weigh-in brought about many challenges, especially during the pandemic of COVID-19. We spent several days prepping prior to the event planning the logistics. There were multiple difficulties in streaming this particular event, including where to run the cables and how to keep them safe from moisture and foot traffic? How would we get a strong internet signal out on a fishing pier? How will we keep the media station and cameras safe in the intermittent weather?
The week before the event our team drove down to scout the location. We tested the internet strength, created graphics of the sponsors and leaderboards, and configured the layout for the cables and cameras in the event. Getting to the location of the event early gave our team the time to troubleshoot and fix any issues that may arise during the live-stream. The day of the event we set up a tent half way down the pier, and the media station under the pier’s pavilion to avoid the intermittent weather. We created custom length SDI and Ethernet cables long enough to run out to the weigh-in tent on the pier (some were as long as 700ft).
Having a great commentator who interacted with the anglers and viewers was instrumental in keeping the audience engagedduring the 8-hour long live-stream. We utilized our Easy Rig and a Teradek for wireless capabilities. With so much action happening, we wanted to capture a birds eye view of the event. We used our drone to show a live feed from overhead. Our gear needed to be mobile, so it was important to have a charging station to keep the batteries charged and swap out multiple batteries on the drone and cameras.
Check out the full recap from this event below: