The Paris 2024 Summer Olympics are going to look spectacular on TV

Olympic Broadcasting Services, the outfit that actually produces the coverage of the Olympic Games, recently outlined its plans for Paris 2024 and interestingly they include using 'cinematic lenses'.

It is just under a year to go now until the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, and perennial host broadcaster Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) has been talking about its plans for coverage of what will be the largest Games to date.

OBS plans to provide more content than ever before, with more than 11,000 hours expected to be produced from the Games, including more athlete-centric coverage and behind-the-scenes material, both pre-and post-competition. This sort of content is increasingly sought by broadcasters looking to engage audiences outside of the actual live sports coverage, and is also going to help the key US market follow the Games which, of course, occur outside the primetime viewing window in the USA.

(Readers may remember the fun back during London 2012 when NBC actually showed delayed coverage rather than a live feed to try and maximise primetime viewing figures. A newly social media capable, second-screen watching audience was less than impressed with its efforts.)

OBS says it is using a versatile suite of cloud-based tools to enable live signal distribution, remote production, and increased flexibility in producing all this content, saying it can achieve more with less and offering broadcasters smarter, more agile, and highly efficient solutions while reducing physical space and power demands at the venues and the International Broadcast Centre hub. As a result, Paris 2024 stands to benefit from substantial cost savings, it reckons, as well as presumably meeting some of the stringent carbon targets it usually sets itself.

Annoyingly, details are scarce. When we say ''has been talking' it has, but only to an invited audience of Media Rights Holders. OBS famously plays its cards close to its chest when it comes to broadcast kit, leading manufacturers to come up with statements such as "our cameras were used in a major two-week tournament that took place this summer" to avoid stern emails from flocks of lawyers.

That means we don't know much about the cinematic lenses and the cameras they're going to be mounted on apart from what it released in a PR. That says:

"OBS will use cinematic lenses for the first time, with shallower depths of field to further bring the viewers into the heart of the action and convey the athletes’ emotions. Additionally, OBS will use technology to enhance storytelling with access to more data and providing more immersive solutions. This includes an increased number of multi-camera replay systems as well as dynamic graphics such as live pinning and biometrics data to enrich the viewer's experience."

For more, SVG wrote what is probably the definitive article so far on all this back in 2021, but it is fair to say the technology will have moved on a bit since. Exactly how much will be fascinating to see, but, as it is, the mixture of ARRIs, REDS, Sony and Canon mirrorless cameras, and both prime and anamorphic lenses that SVG references is already a heady brew.

One thing worth mentioning though is the additional skill that using cinematic lenses will require in fast-moving sports coverage. "Keeping focus on a camera like this is like keeping a marble on a mirror,” Fox Sports SVP, Technical and Field Operations, Mike Davies, told SVG . “An operator needs to get used to how autofocus will respond in various situations in order to make sure that the desired subject is indeed in focus.” 

Why sports broadcast camera operators are real life Jedi knights is one of the most popular features we've ever published. If OBS follows through on its plans, it looks like many of those Jedi knights will be heading back into training over the next 345 days...