Capturing the Action: Pasquale Roedel’s Multi-Camera Magic at the Air n’Style Festival
At Air + Style Innsbruck on 3 and 4 February 2017, big-air snowboarding and live music shared the programme at Olympiaworld. The edition introduced a women’s competition and expanded the event to two days. Enni Rukajärvi won the inaugural women’s final, while Max Parrot took the men’s title. Thousands of spectators gathered around the venue as qualification rounds, finals and concerts shifted the atmosphere from focused anticipation to festival-scale release.
For viewers away from Innsbruck, the event also had to work as a concise television story. Distribution material listed a 90-minute live feed of the snowboard final alongside a 26-minute highlights programme. Both formats posed the same fundamental question: how can a production communicate speed, technique and scale without losing the energy surrounding the sport? German director and producer Pasquale Roedel worked as Multi-Camera Director on the event coverage. His role sat at the point where preparation meets real time: selecting the image that makes a moment understandable, maintaining orientation and allowing the visual narrative to develop without getting ahead of the action.
A big-air run follows a compact sequence – approach, take-off, aerial movement, landing and reaction- but no two attempts are identical. Each phase asks something different of the coverage. A wide view can establish the height of the ramp and the athlete’s trajectory. A closer perspective can make the rotation easier to read. The landing resolves the sporting outcome; the athlete’s and crowd’s reactions supply its emotional release. The challenge is therefore not to use the greatest possible number of angles. It is to put the available images in an order that preserves the logic of the movement. A cut made too early can interrupt the viewer’s sense of trajectory. A shot held too long can miss the response that completes the moment.
In a live programme, those decisions are made in seconds and cannot be reconstructed later. Replay and graphics add a second layer. The live image carries immediacy, while a replay can reveal the technical detail of a trick and help viewers understand the score. Used with restraint, both serve the same story. The goal is clarity rather than visual overload. Air + Style added another rhythm to that grammar.
The sports schedule sat alongside live performances by acts including Bilderbuch, Millencolin, The Naked and Famous, Biffy Clyro and Beginner. Competition coverage is organised around anticipation and outcome; music is shaped by phrasing, performance and the relationship between artist and audience. Presenting both within one event identity requires changes of pace that still feel coherent.
Capturing the Action: Pasquale Roedel’s Multi-Camera Magic at the Air n’Style Festival
The setting also moved from daylight into night. Bright snow, a dark sky, stage lighting and a large crowd created dramatically different visual environments within the same programme. Maintaining a clear sense of place mattered as much as finding spectacular images. Viewers needed to know where the action was happening, what was at stake and when to focus. Live multi-camera direction is necessarily collaborative.
Camera operators, replay, graphics, sound and production each contribute information that may become essential at any moment. The director gives those contributions structure: establishing priorities before the broadcast, reacting to the unexpected and keeping the programme legible while the event continues to unfold.
Air + Style Innsbruck remains a useful example of what that work demands. The spectacle was visible on the ramp and stage; the direction was measured by whether viewers could follow it naturally. Today, Pasquale Roedel works internationally as a director and producer across live entertainment, music and esports, applying the same principle to different formats: turn live complexity into a clear, immediate story.
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