ESPN holds content shoot at Cheshire

CHESHIRE — It’s not every day ESPN comes knocking on your door to do a content shoot for its NFL Primetime show, but Cheshire High was tabbed for a sixhour session on Sunday.

“The people at ESPN gave me a call back in early June and said they were looking for a local turf field to do a content shoot for their ESPN NFL Primetime Show,” Cheshire athletic director Steve Trifone said. “They were wondering if our field was available. I think the reasons they approached us is they wanted a local turf field. plus one of their coordinating directors lives in Cheshire.

“An opportunity like that doesn’t happen every day, so I said sure.”

After some brief negotiations it was determined to do the content shoot on a Sunday since there is less activity on the turf that day. NFL Primetime features highlights of each game played during the week in the NFL. The content shoot will also be used for other NFL shows on ESPN as well.

“They’ve done content shoots for their NFL Primetime show before, but they hadn’t done it at a school before,” Trifone said. “Once we determined a date and time, everything else fell into place.

“At the start of the ESPN NFL Primetime show, before they blast highlights on the two teams that played, they show helmets of the two teams playing. There is some sort of background used for the helmets and this time they wanted turf in the background.”

Trifone said the entire content shoot lasted six hours.

“They started at 4 p.m. and finished at around 10 p.m., just before it started to rain,” Trifone said. “They video taped the helmets of both teams that would be playing in a game and they filmed it on the turf. They filmed helmets for the entire 13 games or so for each week. Every scene was shot eight or nine times.”

The content shoot also drew a crowd.

“Once word about the content shoot got around on Twitter and social media, people started filling the stands to watch,” Trifone said. “Most of the crowd was made up of our school athletes. But others showed up to watch too.”

Trifone said the ESPN crew could be back for another content shoot in the fall.

“The whole thing was kind of cool,” Trifone said. “They said they may do another reshoot in October for the second half of the season.”