A walkie-talkie skitters down a mountain. A coach knits at the ski jump. A skiathlon begins with a crash. Welcome to NBC’s Highlights Factory. The people working there gather the best and oddest happenings of the PyeongChang Olympics and post them for the world to see. But not all of the workers are anywhere near South Korea.
A room lined with computers buzzes during the Olympics. When someone spots a possible memorable moment, a producer edits the film into a brief clip. A social media team quickly posts it on NBC’s Olympic website, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media destinations. Within days, it’s been seen more than 1.6 million times.
NBC employs some 2,500 staff members in PyeongChang. But another 1,000 people work in Connecticut. Staffers of the Highlight Factory comb through every piece of footage shot by NBC—some 778 hours of live competition.
“Pretty much every moment is the most important moment in somebody’s life,” says Eric Hamilton, director of digital video production. “Our job is to draw the curtain back on that and let everyone see it.”
Cameras catch the competitions—plus the moments before and after. They follow coaches biting their nails on the sidelines and family members cheering in the stands. Cameras go into the workout room and onto the slopes. Those are the moments that make the Olympics become more than a sporting event.
So far, the most popular clips from PyeongChang are a halfpipe crash by Yuto Totsuka and gold medal snowboard runs by Shaun White and Red Gerard.
Hamilton’s personal favorite? Seventeen-year-old Gerard heads through a gauntlet of reporters when he asks, “Can I give my mom a hug?” And he does.
(AP Photo: Teenager Red Gerard won the first Olympic gold for the United States.)
