LIVE TV
TECHNOLOGY INNOVATIONS
Ci n e m a t ic m ul t i - cam a t G l a s t o nbur y
Procam Take 2’s Projects Division has gained extensive experience in recent years in filming a whole range of live music events using what the Division’s Technical Director, Dan Studley, describes as ‘non-standard’ OB cameras. “They’re cameras that aren’t designed to do a multi-camera environment,” he says. “And so
we take these beautiful cameras and we turn them into absolute Frankensteins, re-engineering them with an OB solution in mind.” Procam Take 2 has put in a fair deal of work behind the scenes into making the approach work, developing a bespoke lens control system that allows the cine lenses to be integrated into the live production workflow. For wireless 35mm lens control, the company also provides telemetry data pods to feed lens data and paint control
happier, the content is better — remote is here to stay.” Also building out remote capacity at an accelerated pace
has been CTV OB, now part of the mammoth EMG Group. From a standing start of zero in April 2020, it now has six remote galleries; four at its High Wycombe base and one each with the BBC in Salford and BT Sport in Stratford. The sort of workflows that remote is enabling are
exemplified by the Group’s work on the SLT Arena Games in Rotterdam’s Zwemcentrum in April. Complicated by the fact that no one was allowed into The Netherlands due to Covid restrictions at the time, the logistics of getting all the different equipment into the venue was only matched by the complexity of the live workflow. “Videohouse provided the UHD uplink to get signals
back which downloaded into our car park at High Wycombe where we had a truck parked as all the other galleries were up and running,” recounts CTV OB CEO Hamish Greig. “Commentators were in Australia and graphics came in from Edinburgh, and we made a complete production which we output on fibre and dual-link, which was impressive from a venue which has no connectivity.” Greig contends that there is not really anything that can’t
be done anymore when it comes to building workflows for customised solutions (“We have a lot of VPNs going on,” he says), with the challenge being that it still has to be robust and it still has to come in at a reasonable price. Therein lies the rub. “Costs-wise I don’t think remote’s any cheaper, depending on what you’re doing,” he says. “If
32
televisual.com Winter 2021
through to vision control. The company’s work on the recent Live from Worthy Farm event, a six-hour live co-pro between Driift and BBC Studios that replaced this year’s Covid-hit festival, is a case in point. Seven ARRI Amiras and Alexa Minis were prepped, delivered and rigged for the production, flexing to 10 at the end of the week for the Coldplay set. These mounted a wide range of cinema zoom and prime lenses from Angénieux, Canon, Fujinon, and Cooke to produce a genuinely cinematic look for the broadcast. The cameras all fed into Procam Take 2’s Protruck Engineering Support Vehicle, which was supplied to manage the camera record and data management, while it was all also recorded in UHD LOG and HDR delivery for futureproofing. A combination of techniques were utilised across the ten performances, with a mix of
handheld and tripod mounted filming throughout. Two Steadicams were used (the rigs weigh up to 70kg with all the additional elements according to Studley) as well as a Vortex Aerial Camera Mount system to provide vertical tracking up to 30m. Finally, DJI drones and an ARRI Alexa Mini in a helicopter were used for wide aerial shots. Following that, the team shot the recent An Audience with Adele for ITV at the London Palladium. “A global superstar like Adele deserves an amazing cinematic look – this cine approach allows us to develop the cameras beyond the traditional broadcast OB and give the Producers and Director visually beautiful shots from 14 cameras, in a challenging location.” “Our model now is any camera and any lens in a multi-cam environment. That could be a Sony camera, a Canon, an ARRI, a RED - you name it, we’ll supply it.”
it is a big production or it is somewhere intercontinental and you’re offloading 30 or 40 people, flights or overnights, then the economy of scale comes right, But for your normal UK- based production it’s very challenging to make any savings as everything’s taken up by added connectivity or crew costs. “Remote is here to stay for lots of different reasons and with
more usage it will become more cost-effective,” he continues. “The telcos are realising now that they have to provide a solution or we’ll find our own one with dark fibre and our own IO. They have to become more competitive and I think they’re finally realising that.” It’s difficult to leave the subject of remote workflows alone,
however, without at least touching on the subject of latency once. This is an often thorny issue. “How much of the back end do you need to engineer to
make sure that everything comes up co-timed at the point you need it to be, at the output, or your ingest, or wherever?” asks Malcolm Cowan Head of Engineering and Technology, Broadcast and Media Services, NEP UK. The answer, it seems, depends on the contract and how close to live the broadcast is aiming for. “That’s when you need to look at technology like the RIST
protocol where you haven’t got so much error correction, the latency is lower and for a monitoring or low end solution you take the risk on board that you might drop some packets somewhere,” he says. “If clients are happy that what they are monitoring, albeit at a lower quality, is representative of the real more latent and robust programme feed, then you can be
Pic credit: Adriano Martelli
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140
