SMPTE Hollywood Meet an Industry Innovator: The National Hot Rod Association Roars Back to the Starting Line

Having postponed its season in March due to COVID-19, NHRA returned to racing with three events at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in July and August.

To facilitate telecasts of the events on Fox, Rob Hedrick, NHRA’s director of post-production and supervising producer, and the NHRA broadcasting team devised a workflow leveraging Sony, NewTek and Grass Valley technology and BeBop’s remote collaboration platform, to allow the broadcast crew to carry on their work while adhering to social distancing guidelines.
At NHRA, Hedrick leads a team creating deliverables for Fox Sports and the association’s OTT platform, which he helped create. With more than 20 years of television experience, he has pioneered live streaming since 2004 delivering live coverage of breaking news and weather events including Hurricane Katrina. Since the pandemic, Rob has transformed his apartment in downtown Los Angeles into an online editing suite to remotely support the NHRA on FOX’s telecast.
Greg Ciaccio, principal of [VIZN] Consulting, will moderate. Ciaccio is a creative technologist with a passion for technology and workflow solutions. He has served in executive operational management positions at Sim, Ascent, Technicolor and Deluxe. He helped launch leading-edge products and services including Technicolor’s DP Lights and Deluxe’s Mobilabs near-set dailies solutions. He serves as Chair of the ASC Motion Imaging Technology Council’s Workflow Committee, which includes the ACES and Advanced Data Management Subcommittees. Additionally, he is a Board Member of the SMPTE Hollywood Section, an ASC Associate member and a founding member of the Digital Cinema Society.

Thursday, September 24, 12:00 p.m. PDT