How The Games Are Made: My Time As a Shot Selector
By: Will Schiller
The 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, China, have been electrifying, divisive, and intriguing. I was hired to work at NBC Sports Group headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut as a Shot Selector in the Highlights Factory group.
My job as a Shot Selector is to be the “eyes and ears” of the Games. 15 Shot Selectors as well as myself are each assigned two to three events per day to look for “moments of interest,” or MOI’s. MOI’s include the AGONY of defeat or CARNAGE, or REPLAYS or CELEB (celebration). Our clips are included in the daily Inside the Rings compilation, in memorable highlights of all the crashes from the Alpine skiing events, or human interest stories like small nations at the Olympic Winter Games.
As Shot Selectors we act as the human quality control over a beta AI captioning system known as Stanza, which captions all the highlights you see on nbcolympics.com. There are at least 50 clips that come in during a single 12-hour shift. In addition, it can get quite complicated when there are names that are difficult to understand or spell in English.
Mike Tirico's Extended Roundtable is a 30-minute piece that I personally worked on. Although it took a considerable amount of time to complete, I am extremely proud of the work that I did on this piece, and I encourage everyone to give it a watch. Topics including China’s human rights abuses towards the Uyghur in Xinjiang, geopolitical tensions, and the relationship with Hong Kong and Taiwan, are discussed in great detail.
Beijing is 13 hours ahead of Stamford. As a result, I have been on a flipped time schedule, meaning I go to bed in the morning, and wake up at night. It certainly took a bit of an adjustment – the night that I “switched” over, I just stayed up as late as I could (ended up being around 7am), and went to bed. The strategy ended up working well, although my crazy schedule has made other responsibilities a little bit more difficult.
A normal day in my life looks like this:
4:30pm – 5:00pm: Wake-up
5:00pm – 6:30pm: Workout, or meet with students (depends on the day)
6:30pm: Take the bus from the hotel to the Stamford facility. If I have time, I grab a bite to eat at the commissary.
7:00pm – 10:30pm/11:30pm: Cover my first event. During any downtime, catch up on schoolwork.
11:30pm – 12:30pm: Get “lunch.”
12:30pm – 5:30am: Do events two and three. During any downtime, catch up on schoolwork.
5:30am – 7:00am: Further catch up on schoolwork.
7:00am – 7:30am: Grab “dinner” and take the bus back to the hotel.
7:30am – 9:30am: Workout and then meet with students (if scheduled).
9:30am: Bedtime!
This assignment has been filled with late nights, little sleep, great food, huge upsets, and an overall incredible experience. Despite having to be away from D.C. for more than 3 weeks, I’ve had such a positive experience. For me, the coolest part has been just being able to say that I am part of the incredible, multi-national team at NBC who has put on these Games.
Another cool aspect is that I’ve been able to see various announcers and athletes throughout the building, including Lindsey Vonn, Shaun White, Laurie Hernandez, and Kenny Albert, among others.
I hope you’ve enjoyed watching the Games as much as I have enjoyed covering them.
P.S. – There is nothing more electric than curling.