Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/957795
DGA QUARTERLY 13 PHOTOS: NBC OLYMPICS All About Eve on Ice U N S C R I P T E D O M E N ' S F I G U R E skat- ing—which combines el- egance, grace and athleti- cism—is always a big draw at the Winter Olympics. And when you add in a rivalry, it ups the ante: think Harding vs. Kerrigan, or Kwan vs. Lipinski. But with the Americans pretty much counted out of the running after the short program at the recent Games in Pyeongchang, the focus was on the so- called Russian Showdown between skaters Evgenia Medvedeva, the reigning 18-year- old world champion, and Alina Zagitova, the 15-year-old junior world champion who within five months, in announcer Tara Lipinski's words, "had disrupted the whole narrative for these games," much as a 15-year-old Lipinski did when she de- throned the 17-year-old Kwan in 1998. As Pierre Moossa, director of the Olympics figure skating competition for NBC, points out, "This was supposed to be a coronation for Medvedeva, and all of the THE RUSSIAN SHOWDOWN IN PYEONGCHANG WAS A CLASSIC, DIRECTED BY PIERRE MOOSSA WITH THE PRECISION OF A TRIPLE AXEL BY STEVE CHAGOLLAN W sudden, there's a good chance that some 15-year-old is going to come out of nowhere and steal her gold medal." It didn't help Medvedeva that after she broke the world record two nights prior in the short program, her upstart team- mate broke it again 10 minutes later by 1.31 points. Although they're friends off the ice, when it came to competing, Medvedeva said, "This is war." Or as announcer Johnny Weir succinctly described the sport, it's "brass knuckles under velvet gloves." Moossa worked with a team of more than 100, led by producer Rob Hyland and the tal- ent in the booth: announcers Lipinski, Weir and Terry Gannon. "It's kind of like a dance in that somebody's leading and everybody's kind of following," explains Moossa. The director, a veteran of 11 Games, had worked every Olympics since 1996 with the exception of 1998's Nagano, which was cov- ered by CBS. For Pyeongchang, Moossa had 16 cam- eras—including five handheld—at his dis- posal, with 12 additional cameras, called "splits," supplied by host broadcaster OBS (Olympic Broadcasting Services). Among those OBS feeds were a dedicated "kiss and cry" camera, situated where the skaters exit the rink; an overhead cable camera that Moossa used often; and several high-speed, super-slo-mo cameras that record pictures at a much higher frame rate so that when they're slowed down, the footage plays exceed- ingly smooth. The precision of the skaters is mirrored by the production plan go- ing in. "There is a researcher named Cindy Hsieh who goes to every practice," says Moossa, "and she es- sentially draws a map of the figure skating rink with the cameras on it, FOCUS » Evgenia Medvedeva and Alina Zagitova exit the rink after warmups. Below left, the tension is palpable backstage; right, Medve- deva keeps loose during Zagitova's performance.