in-game highlights package in a matter of seconds. If a
running back, say, rushed for 100 yards in a half, Crane
would pull video from various “looks” and fashion a 20- or
30-second clip of the best runs. “You want the highlights
to seem natural, to tell the same story that’s playing out
live,” Crane says, “That’s what really good guys who run
tape do.”
Pick a big sports moment. Most fans will be able to
picture it; they’ll also remember the TV announcer who
called it, Al Michaels or Dick Vitale or Joe Buck. The
“talent,” though, is only a small part of an ecosystem
that is equal parts army and hospital. So-called below-
the-line guys—and the vast majority of workers in sports
broadcasting remain men—are every bit as responsible
for your enjoyment of the game as the folks sitting inHe quit his bank job the next week. He’d take any gig in
sports TV; if that meant shooting a football game in the
rain or getting up in the wee hours to make a kickoff in
Kentucky that afternoon—well, what’s 400 miles? “I was
making about $18,000,” Crane says, “and I told my wife
that if I could get to $30,000, that would be awesome.”
A year or so later, Crane was freelancing at the Great
Outdoor Games in Lake Placid, N.Y., when someone asked
whether he knew how to operate an EVS machine. “Sure,”
he said. Then he asked around: Does anyone know what
the hell an EVS is? Crane stayed up all night in his hotel
room, reading the manual for a video-editing apparatus
that pulls short clips from multiple cameras. By the next
day he was at least semiconversant. “It was the ultimate
in fake it till you make it,” he says. “I was just hoping I
could power up the machine, but it went well.”
Crane didn’t just pick it up quickly; he was a natural, a
virtuoso. The equipment—about the size of a laptop, with
various dials and levers and buttons—almost came to
seem an extension of his arm. Pairing his feel for sports
with his dexterity as an editor, he could put together anTHE FOG OF FORE
Amen Corner in a quiet moment,
before all the action that Crane had
FR worked his whole career to be around.
ED^
VUI
CH