Fans attending the NJCAA Division II Mens National Basketball Tournament in Danville are seeing some changes around the community and the college. Last year a large new video board was added to the gymnasium. And this year there’s a new media suite for the games at Danville Area Community College.
Mark Barnes is the Chief Information Technology Officer at the college…
{AUDIO: ‘’I’ve been wanting a media suite for the last few years because we’ve been stuck in a closet back there for so long. And now we’ve got a very nice place to be able to do this. And thanks to (tournament co-director) Brian Hensgen who worked with the vice-president of the college – Dr. Bridges. He worked with the faculty and helped secure the location here.’’}
Barnes explained what is included in the new media center…
{AUDIO: ‘’Everything is in here. We run camera operations through this. We have remote cameras now – which are controlled with a joystick just like a video game. And we find that, actually, some of the younger guys that run the cameras do better than some of us old guys do. I think they’re more adapt to running a joystick and making it look like a video game. We have all the graphics and things that we put up to the Jumbotron in the gymnasium come from out here. We’re able to do the streaming for the video. We also put this out on channel 5 for Xfinity. During the tournament we broadcast to their channel for the NJCAA.’’}
Barnes added one of the improvements involved the installation of a new camera system…
{‘’Our cameras used to be on the floor and ran by people on the floor. Now, basically they’re remote cameras and you can barely see them really. They are not very big at all. They’re probably only six to eight inches tall. So now the interview will still be on the floor but we have an audio system down there that we’ll be able to communicate with the interviewer and then as the coach comes up we put that out on the stream. And then he says ‘o.k. let’s go back up to the media booth’ and we can hear that and the guys in the media booth will take over for the radio station.’’}
Much of the work building the new media center was done by the maintenance staff at the college. It was first used during the earlier Vermilion County Tournament featuring teams from county high schools.
