Newsletter from 23/06/2020
The event industry will not survive the next 100 days!
Since March 10th, 2020, a complete branch of the economy has effectively been deprived of the working basis. Any kind of major events are prohibited due to the COVID-19 crisis. Show events, sport events, conferences, congresses, concerts, festivals or theatrical performances - wherever people come together to experience fun, knowledge and entertainment or to exchange information on relevant topics, are not allowed to take place. Even trade fairs and small events, which are currently allowed again, are subject to necessary and strict hygiene regulations; this means that events are no longer economically feasible.
The event industry is on the red list of acutely endangered industries!
“Night of Light” is a shining memorial and a flaming appeal from the event industry to save the event industry, which needs real help instead of credit programs! We call for an industry dialogue with politicians to find a way out of the crisis together!
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MOBILE PRODUCTION
Dome Productions Drives Towards an IP-Enabled Future with Grass Valley
At the heart of the new UHD5 truck’s IP workflow is the GV Orbit dynamic system orchestrator, which provides full system control and configuration and simplifies the deployment of any IP network; using the interface, operators can easily configure and change systems on the fly. The truck will also be packed with Grass Valley’s IP switching and routing solutions, MV-821-IP Multiviewers and IQUCP25/50 Gateways. The migration to IP will allow Dome Productions to support multiple signals on fiber, leveraging more capability from a single vehicle and eliminating the need to deploy multiple trucks at larger events. “Dome Productions has a reputation for being resourceful and adaptable to meet our clients’ needs. Looking ahead, IP will be central to helping us remain agile. The ability to have a true end-to-end IP infrastructure and workflow – from glass to glass —means, with our review complete, we are now prepared to make the leap into IP infrastructure,” said Mary Ellen Carlyle, SVP and general manager, Dome Production.
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All Mobile Video Soups Up New IP-based Production Truck With TSL Products’ Range of Audio Monitoring Solutions
All Mobile Video’s one-of-a-kind ECLIPSE is also equipped with TSL’s PAM-IP audio monitors, which provide both audio and video monitoring of 2110 and 2022-6 sources as well as full edge device control. “Choosing to integrate TSL Products’ PAM-IP into the new ECLIPSE truck was a no brainer,” says Ian Vysick, audio design specialist, All Mobile Video. “Over the years, we have built a strong relationship with the TSL team and there’s a great deal of trust between us. We have used the PAM-IP in other trucks and when we were in the design process for the ECLIPSE, we reached out to Greg Siers, US Director of Sales at TSL, and he told us about the new MPA1 V series of audio monitors, which I was very excited about.”
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Astera for Love Island France … in South Africa
South African rental and technical production company Blond Productions invested in its first Astera products – Titan Tubes and AX3 Lightdrops – for the first series of reality dating show Love Island France. This was filmed earlier in the year at a luxury villa on the beautiful Lothian wine estate in Elgin Valley, on the banks of the Palmiet River – and with its own private lake – about an hour’s drive from Cape Town. Paris-based director of photography (DOP) Florian Sinopoli works worldwide on various TV shows and series, and last year also lit Celebrity Love Island in South Africa for producers ITV Studios. He initially specified the Asteras, although Blond Productions’ owner Christiaan Ballot was already considering making an investment in the brand after numerous recommendations, “It was really just a question of awaiting the right moment,” he explained … “and this was it!”
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STUDIO / REMOTRE PRODUCTION
PWL Launches Virtual Event Studio
Leading lighting, visuals, show and production design practice Painting with Light (PWL) has opened – in partnership with NEP Belgium – a new Virtual Event Studio at its C-MINE HQ in Genk, Belgium, offering a slick streaming production / broadcast facility – including full virtual audience interactivity – to deliver the highest quality digital events. Based on a model created by Univate in The Netherlands, the new PWL Studio space offers an innovative and creative approach for staging virtual events of all types – from keynote speeches, corporate meetings and presentations to brand activations, product launches and conferences to seminars to album launches, parties and live music streams. The project is a response to the massive increase in demand for streamed, ‘delivered-live’ and recorded events and content to expand reach and visibility in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and new social distancing rules and guidelines.
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TD Ameritrade Market Drives go online on a virtual Town Hall
TD Ameritrade provides its customers with educational events around the country called Market Drives. Each of these events draws several hundred to a thousand people. Due to the current pandemic crisis, TD Ameritrade cancelled four of its upcoming Market Drive events. To fill this void, Broadcast Management Group (BMG) proposed replacing upcoming Market Drive events with virtual Town Halls. TD Ameritrade Network (TDAN) agreed, and asked BMG to produce the first event in six days! On Saturday, April 4th, BMG produced an incredibly successful, four-hour-long, live Town Hall for TDAN at their Chicago Studio. BMG created all of the show graphics, a complete virtual set, and also configured six remote locations. After the success of this event, on May 30th BMG produced the second virtual live event and two more are coming up in the next months.
Wüsthof Broadcasts Cutting Academy Livestream Series with Blackmagic Design
Delivered from inception by production agency HerzbergMedia, the thirteen part Cutting Academy helped viewers develop their kitchen knife skills. Each show featured celebrity guest chef René Steinbach, who delivered live practical demonstrations, as well as Viola Wüsthof of the Wüsthof family, who shared guidance on sharpening and caring for professional kitchen knives. The content was available through Facebook Live and the brand’s YouTube channel, with audiences encouraged to comment and ask questions. “The lockdown kickstarted a massive surge in the number of brands streaming content online. Although there were lots of cookery shows, we hadn’t seen anyone taking on practical cutting skills. With 200 years of experience, we knew WÜSTHOF was in the perfect position to share its expertise,” explains Jens Harald Herzberg, owner of HerzbergMedia. “We developed the premise of the series, then worked with the Wüsthof family to get production up and running.”
TSL Lighting Supplies Solution for Skillsoft Stream
TSL was approached by lighting designer Tim Ball to supply a fitting solution for the project, with a specification that would provide the presentation with the perfect balance of lighting for the cameras filming the session. As one of the leading global providers of education technology and training, Skillsoft had originally programmed its ‘Perspectives 2020’ session as an in-person event, but the COVID-19 lockdown meant that LRI and Skillsoft worked quickly to transform the production into a fully online, global digital experience. Ball’s design included Chroma-Q Colorforce II 48 LED battens for scenic treatment, Arri 650 Plus fresnels for key lighting, ETC Source Four Profiles for graphics highlights and an array of battery-powered Astera AX3 LightDrop LED spotlights for backlight.
Guy Sebastian brings the mix home with Genelec
Sebastian first came to prominence in 2003 as the first winner of Australian Idol. Since then, his career has gone from strength-to-strength with platinum records in the US and Australia, and sell-out tours around the world. This success has enabled him to create a purpose-built recording space in his new home, giving him the ability to work on new projects as soon as inspiration strikes. The architectural design for the studio was handled by acoustic designer John Sayers, with Sebastian taking responsibility for the interior. “This house is like a concrete bunker,” explains Sebastian. “It’s concrete and black steel and really tough, so I wanted the studio to have a bit more of a modern sort of vibe. I wanted to keep it pretty monochrome, and really minimal and clean looking.”
SPORT EVENTS
Texas A&M Goes IP with Imagine Communications for Integrated Sports Production
The A&M campus in College Station, Texas, incorporates seven sports venues, spread across the site, which host as many as 110 events a year. As well as offering broadcast outputs from any event at any location, 12th Man Productions also provides in-stadium big screen entertainment and information. The football stadium, Kyle Field, was rebuilt in 2014, and as part of that project, a central studio was planned. Today, fiber circuits connect every field back to the Kyle Field stadium, allowing resources to be allocated to any venue dynamically. Four control rooms allow two venues to broadcast live, while also producing big screen shows at two more venues. This calls for a large number of feeds in each direction, supporting monitors, multiple digital signage networks and big screen replays, as well as feeds for home and visiting teams. There is also a need to provide for official replay facilities in many sports. All signals are handled as uncompressed HD, minimizing latency by eliminating the delays of compression math, and allowing for live remote production even when venues are 10 kilometers from the control room.
Riedel’s MediorNet, Artist, and Bolero Form All-New Routing and Communications Backbone at New Jersey’s Prudential Center
Opened in 2007, Prudential Center has been the home arena for the NHL’s New Jersey Devils, the Seton Hall University Pirates men’s basketball team, and more than 175 concerts, family shows, and special events each year. Known by fans as “The Rock,” the arena seats 16,500 for hockey games and almost 19,000 for basketball. The new Riedel solution replaces an intercom system that was original to Prudential Center and a router that had reached its end of life. Connecting Prudential Center’s control room to the arena floor, the new Artist- and Bolero-based intercom system powers communications for all in-arena productions. The MediorNet real-time network routes all video content and feeds from the control room to the scoreboard and monitors throughout the building, and also transports feeds to replay operators for all sporting events.
Iconic race returns from January 3-15 with tough Jeddah and Ha’il stages
As well as a new route for 2021, further innovations will be added to the mix to increase the sporting challenges of the event while always prioritising participant safety. Handing out the roadbook of a stage just 10 minutes before racing starts will bring navigation skills to the fore. Also among the new regulations are strict rules governing tyres. No tyre changes will be allowed in the car category during the marathon stage while each motorbike will be granted a total of six rear tyres for the entire rally. To ensure competitors remain as safe as possible there will be audible warnings ahead of danger zones. Furthermore, certain hazardous sections will be categorised as “slow zones” where the speed limit will be set at 90kph. Airbag vests will now be mandatory and subject to inspection by race officials during technical scrutineering.
SHOW EVENTS
Golden Nicas for Hong Kong Protest Movement and Artists in Los Angeles, Vienna and Graz
The Golden Nica in the category “Digital Communities” goes to the Hong Kong protest movement. In the category “Interactive Art +” the Golden Nica is awarded to artist Lauren Lee McCarthy, who lives and works in Los Angeles. The top prize in the category “Computer Animation” goes to artist Miwa Matreyek, also of Los Angeles, while VALIE EXPORT is honored with a Golden Nica for lifetime achievement in art and feminism as a “Visionary Pioneer of Feminist Media Art.” The Golden Nica for the category “u19 – create your world” was won by Lisa Rass, Franziska Gallé, Jona Lingitz and Anna Fachbach, all of them pupils at the HTBLVA-Graz Ortweinschule.
“Autokultur” with Sido and Sennheiser
With the slogan “Autokultur – from Hannover for Hannover”, an unusual series of events is helping to keep the entertainment scene in Northern Germany buzzing. Every evening, up to a thousand vehicles converge on Hannover’s Schützenplatz fairground, where they tune in their UHF radios – just like in a drive-in cinema – to listen to exciting stage performances, from concerts to comedy. It’s all a welcome distraction from life during lockdown, and an optimistic ray of light in a time when typical live events have all been cancelled. Among the highlights of the early summer concert series were two sold-out performances by German rapper Sido. The multitalented artist used a Sennheiser SKM 6000 to wow the crowds on 11 and 12 May 2020. With its stunning bright red, high-gloss finish, the handheld transmitter proved to be a real eye catcher and was the centre of attention during close-ups of the performer on the huge LED walls.
Toucan Productions’ Secret Shop DJ livestream series
Arvol Dingess and Parker Shore, both of Toucan, have been instrumental in getting the Secret Shop livestreams up and running, an idea that emerged from Covid-era downtime. “Sometime in May, Arvol, our video lead at Toucan, hit me up with the idea to do a streaming show from the Toucan shop and I jumped on it,” said Shore, an Oklahoma City native who has been a lighting specialist at Toucan for the past five years. “We did some cocktail napkin sketches of the rig, built it and then pitched it to my network of DJs. Since no one has gigs at the moment, they’ve been more than happy to do it.” With few projects on the board and touring put on hold (Shore was supposed to be on the road as L2/Laser Programmer for Louis the Child), the idea came together fairly quickly with the first Secret Shop DJ sets airing on May 27th. Not only have the sets provided much needed musical relief during the Covid pandemic, they have allowed Toucan personnel to hone a new skill, one that will almost certainly be essential in the near future.
PRODUCTS
Movicom and Vislink Team Up To Elevate Refcams for Champions Hockey League and New Sporting Events
Beyond the standard Refcam kit, Movicom was asked to develop an even lighter/smaller system for summer sports, so Movicom again turned to Vislink’s IMT Dragonfly transmitter technology. The new system, dubbed ‘Earcam’, consists of an Atom mini Air camera mounted on a simple comfortable headband, with the transmitter and battery pack embedded in a belt pack. The system can be employed by officials in sports that may not require head safety equipment such as soccer, field hockey, American football as well as many other sports, including indoor sports like basketball and boxing. “The main goal here was to get right into the action, to capturing the athlete’s emotions in close up, if possible - almost from their point of view.” Said Victor Pakhomov, CEO of Movicom. This pushes the shot options available to directors across the sports gamut, enhancing their ability to tell the game’s and athlete’s story.
Dynacord introduces the MXE5 matrix mix engine, first member of new performance audio matrix series
Ready for a wide range of applications: The MXE5 is designed for consultants, production companies, specifiers and system integrators who demand the highest-quality BGM and uncompromising live performance sound. It is the perfect choice for installations including stadiums and sports facilities; congress, conference and performing arts centers; contemporary churches; and large educational facilities. Production companies can also deploy the MXE5 in live-sound environments in a system drive rack. Delivering the highest audio quality: The MXE5 benefits from advanced DSP, providing outstanding audio quality and dynamic range. This is ensured by a sampling rate of 96 kHz and the industry’s lowest audio latency of less than 0.22 ms. Dynacord’s leading-edge DSP technology also shows in other specifications, such as an extremely low distortion rate (<0.002 dB THD) and a signal-to-noise ratio of more than 118 dB.
Ultritouch from Ross Wins SCN Installation Product Award at InfoComm Connected 2020
First launched in late 2018, Ultritouch is a powerful rack-mountable touchscreen panel combining traditional functionality while adapting workflows for operators fluent with smartphones. Ultritouch controls a host of Ross Video equipment as well as many third-party signal processing products. Unlike traditional control panels that feature hard keys or a combination of hard and soft keys, Ultritouch is completely customizable, meaning that operators can design the panel to suit their workflows rather than having to adapt their way of working to suit the limitations of the panel. The fully integrated touch UI with, multidevice navigation, button mapping and NDI decoding means less training, quicker setup and greater ease of use for operations staff.