It’s one of the summer’s biggest sporting events. The annual MLB All-Star Game will take place Tuesday, July 11 and Fox will be there to cover it all. To bring fans closer to the game, Fox Sports will have microphones placed all over Marlins Park in Miami. Not only placed, but buried underneath and placed strategically to pick up audio that hasn’t normally been heard on baseball broadcasts.
Overall, Fox will have 13 on-field microphones, two in front of the pitcher’s mound, one for a righty, another for a lefty. Then the others will be located behind the pitcher’s mound, four behind the infield where the outfield grass meets the dirt and then the rest placed all over the outfield.
Here’s where the mics will be placed:
Fox hopes to pick up the outfielders’ steps, the pitchers’ grunting as they throw pitches plus umpires’ conversations with the players.
Not only will there be field mics, but Fox will also utilize parabolic microphones and overall, more than 100 microphones so fans can hear not just the bats hitting the ball, but all types of ambient noise from the ballpark.
Fox Sports senior audio mixer Joe Carpenter who has won multiple Emmy Awards for his work says the goal is capture sounds that are key to the All-Star Game:
“We’re simply capturing sounds that are situational to the game … outfielders yelling, ‘I got it!’ or the sound of the shortstop landing with a thud after a diving stop. We want to be able to share those natural game sounds with the FOX Sports audience.”
It’s all about improving the viewing experience and Fox hopes that fans will notice the audio as well as the pictures coming from Marlins Park.
