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The CIP '06: How did we do it?

Fencing Pictures Tournament Services

How did we do it?

For several days we barely slept, waking in the early morning and working long past the end of the day's activities.

PictureBased on our prior experience producing World Cups and the Fencing World Championships, we have an experienced team where each member knows his role.

It took a lot of work, but the results were astounding. The CIP looked better than ever, and the fencing never looked more exciting.

Captain's Log

The Challenge International de Paris — a benchmark for international tournaments and an important Grand Prix for Foil.

Fencing Pictures was hired by the French Fencing Federation to feed the large screens in the fencing arena, and to make a marketing spot to show to the federation's sponsors.

We arrived on the scene with a five-person team:

     Guillermo Alger (Producer, Director)
     Emilio Arguello (Director, Camera)
     Don Berube (Camera)
     Elcio Ramalho (Camera)
     Jeff Renault (Sound/Video Engineer) 

Friday

We picked up all the equipment that we rented in Paris and brought it to the venue. There, we installed the cables and hook-ups, and made a video light test.

Saturday

We arrived at the venue 9:30 am and set up the cameras and boards. We had two cameras, and were mixing both cameras and sending the signal to the large screen.

For all our video work now we make sure to film everything in high definition video, so as soon as HD support is availble for DVDs we will be able to make HD DVDs. The fencing looks astonishing on HD. We have never seen fencing like this before. It makes a huge difference, in everything from a video iPod to a large TV set. The hi-def era is very exiting and not very far from our sport.

The competition started at 2pm and went to around 10 pm. There was some tremendous fencing — and this is why we do this! To see the fencing!

Cassara was on fire. Climbing thorugh the rounds, he went 15/5 against Wessels, 15/11 against Joppich, 15/6 against Lei, 15/11 against Vanni. The final bout is amazing because he starts down.

France's Le Pechoux and Attely were doing very well also, but it was Kleibrink's day overall.

Being fencers helps us get the job done. The French Federation liked our work very much because we knew what to show on the screens, and when. French Maestro Patrice Menon gave commentary for the individual finals. He told us you can really see the difference when the fencing is filmed by fencers.

Sunday

We started early, at 9am. First we recorded France/Holland, then France/Russia (the Russians were using transparent masks!) and France/Poland (which was very close).

We captured the semi-final, Poland/Germany, which was a great team bout. The final was the best — France/Italy (again!!) but this time France was going to have to fight. Cassara was very strong, and Baldini was a great addition to the team. Baldini was second versus Keilbrink at the 2005 Austria Junior World Championships, and I remember filming that great match.

Summary

At the end, the whole team was very happy. We'd had a very intense weekend! Saturday we left the apartment at 8:30 am and returned at 1:30 am, Sunday we left at 7:30 am and returned at 10:00 pm!

Throughout the tournament we were running trials of our different services, and we have the expertise to: