InterBEE REVIEW2012 (EN)

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77Bringing out the best of all 60 Olympic events through soundOverseeing sound design for 8 Olympics over 20 years Sawaguchi: “Tell us about your previous work experience.” Baxter: “I have worked as a freelance engineer in the broadcasting industry or to be more precise, sports broadcasting, for about 35 years. I have had the honor of doing this great job all over the world. In particular, my work with the Olympic Committee has lasted for about 20 years. I started fully operating as a sound designer for Olympic projects from the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, so Sochi will be my ninth.”Sawaguchi: “You have gained vast experience at the Olympics ranging from analog to 5.1 surround. What events led to your involvement with sound for sports programs?”Baxter: “I worked as a mixer for outside broadcasting programs at NBC and was in charge of outside broadcasts at the Seoul Olympics for NBC in 1988. From the next Olympics at Barcelona in 1992 a new management structure and organization was put in place and I started working full-time for Olympic broadcasts. At that time I was introduced to Mr. Manolo Romero, who was in charge of Olympic broadcasts, and it was then that I felt that this was the job for me.”“At the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, the Olympic Committee started recruiting large numbers of specialists in areas such as video & lighting and sound to improve and increase the scale of Olympic broadcasts. TV viewers and sponsor companies applauded the move. Efforts made at that time set the standard for Olympic broadcasts.”Bringing out the best of up to 60 events through sound Sawaguchi: “What difficulties did you undergo at first?”Baxter: “Because I had been in charge of outside broadcasting in the beginning, I didn’t really understand what was required for the Olympics. All of a sudden I was made the planner and just the act of going to the office was hard. When I first started working for Olympic broadcasts, I was really surprised at the number of events – there are 60. So, to begin with I had to learn about these events. I watched previous Olympic video archives and analyzed the main points of each event.”“The biggest challenge at first and something that was very important was working together with sporting organi-zations including FIFA and FIG (International Gymnastics Federation). Each sporting event has many restric-tions when it comes to broadcasting, so it was necessary to get approval from each sporting organization when filming these events. For example, attaching a single microphone required approval. Building a good relationship with sporting organizations enabled us to get approval smoothly. I spent a lot of time at first building good relationships with sporting organizations, broadcasting people, and audio crew.”“In actual fact, at that time most of the 60 events hadn’t been broadcast on TV. Also, different sports are popular in different countries – for example, judo is big in Japan, archery in Korea, table tennis in China and so on. It could be said that the Olympics is a place to present and make such sports more popular interna-tionally. Sound design has an extremely important role in bringing the best out of such events.”“At the London Olympics we got complaints from gymnastic organizations that the sound of each athletes’ actions when competing was overly-vivid. However, I rejected this saying that it was what the viewers wanted. Viewers don’t watch the broadcasts at a theater but rather indoors from places such as the living room, kitchen, and bedroom, so I explained that they want to hear all those intricate sounds from the athletes’ breathing, shaking hands, and expressing emotions. It is my job to present those intricate sounds for the sake of sound expression. If sounds from the venue can be relayed so precisely, a commentator will be superfluous.”

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