LIVE SPORT
TECHNOLOGY INNOVATIONS
here will be no gold medals for guessing what has caused the biggest impact on live sports production this year. Yet despite its chilling effect on ordinary life and operations, the pandemic has proved to be an accelerant for innovation for an industry already set on a number of directions of travel.
B r o ad c a s t a t a di s t an c e Remote production was already on the cards, for the savings in costs and the impact on the environment that would follow from the removal of trucks and personnel from the highways of the land. However COVID really advanced the concept. “During the first lockdown we maintained a number
of essential services at Stockley Park including our MCR, transmission, distribution, library and engineering departments. This allowed us to deploy a number of remote solutions,” says David Shield SVP of IMG Studios. “We were reluctant to ‘break down’ too much of the infrastructure and instead concentrated on providing remote desktops to servers located at Stockley Park. In that way media workflows that depend upon connection to nearline and archive could be maintained. We have had to provide a lot more remote monitoring of live feeds by means of streaming. We are still searching for the best way to achieve remote commentary with minimal latency. “I believe we are likely to see more distributed
production,” adds Shield. “Because of the difficulty of travel both domestically and internationally, Coronavirus has placed much greater emphasis on remote production which in some cases is distributed.” “I think prior to COVID, some remained sceptical of
remote production and thought it was preferable to have everyone onsite,” says Laura McManamon, senior production manager, F1 at Whisper Films, which utilises Timeline’s Ealing broadcast centre. “We were at an advantage as we had been a promoter of remote production for some time. We had the experience of SailGP [produced remotely], plus systems already in place for our F1 remote highlight productions, so the shift to remote-only for F1 live wasn’t too disruptive for us.
“Another change we have seen is the wider acceptance of
virtual interviews, rather than everyone being studio based,” adds McManamon. “This increases options for producers, as to who can be available. Presenters need to be near to the action so viewers feel immersed, while a crew member needs to be on the ground to be able to jump on any emerging stories as they happen. But the majority of the back end of the show can be produced remotely.” “It is a very interesting way of producing live sports,
especially in this pandemic situation as we always consider the well-being of the people working for and with us,”
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televisual.com Winter 2020
“ PRIOR T O C O V I D -19 S OME
REMAINED S C EP TIC AL OF REMO TE PR OD UC TION ”
La u r a McManamon WHI S PE R
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