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ROUND TABLE
NEAL ROMANEK: What are the real benefits to doing production in this distributed way?
ROBERT ERICKSON: It comes down to efficiency and duty cycle. With college football or baseball, you might have 70 or 80 games a day. Networks, such as ESPN, traditionally fly a crew to every single production. You want to do a baseball game: you get a truck, you fly in a crew. You want to do another baseball game: you get another truck, you fly in another crew. They are there for a two- hour production, then go back to their hotel room, before flying home the next day. But remote production introduces efficiency. What if I can build a hub in LA, Charlotte or London? I can assemble a large staff with a technical director, audio engineer, graphics operator, producer and assistant director. All those people can do one show. They can take a break and walk back into that same studio an hour later for another show. You can do back-to-back shows, and that capital asset you invested millions of dollars in can have an 80% usage cycle. CLAIRE WILKIE: I’m not an engineer. I’m a girl with a vision. I find remote production really exciting. I love live production and coming up with challenging, mad ideas. Remote production opens up so much freedom for that.
We use a lot of Blackmagic Design kit that proves scalable and modular. On top of that, we don’t have a legacy of big broadcast trucks – we are not one of those behemoth companies. With remote production, you really are unlimited in what you can do now. With the tech becoming smaller, it means a more level playing field, and this is something that’s necessary. TIM PUSCHKEIT: Even though I’ve been working in this business a while, sometimes I still think it’s unreal that you can operate cameras located in Sydney or Paris from London or Germany. But it’s our bread and butter now – and it’s the future. Remote production does give you more challenges, requiring clearer communication. The camera operator may be sitting in a different time zone, speaking a different language. NORBERT PAQUET: Distributed production is modular. But considering exactly where you place the different building blocks of the production process is important. That is the acquisition, production and processing of the content, as well as distribution, plus the people required. A director might appreciate working close to his home if the stadium is far away. But others prefer to go the stadium to see the atmosphere and talk to camera operators face to face. There is that flexibility with remote production; you can put the right people in the right places, based on the production workflow you want to achieve.
NEAL ROMANEK: Howmight remote production actually affect how – and where – people work?
ROBERT ERICKSON: There’s been technology for five or ten years that has allowed us to do remote productions efficiently. But the way we’ve been doing production for eternity has worked – and broadcasters were reticent to make the change. You’ve always had engineers that want improvements, but someone at the network was likely to say: “I get that, but this is how we’ve done things. This is a premier event and we’re not going to risk messing up our cash cow.” Covid-19 opened up the door. Engineers could say: “Let’s try it this way. We’ve never done it, but the risk is actually pretty low.” It introduced the idea of innovation to senior management, raising the industry’s tolerance for failure – it’s never been a big fan of failure. But true innovation comes with the idea
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“I LOVE LIVE PRODUCTION AND COMING UP WITH CHALLENGING, MAD IDEAS”
FEED:XTREME MAY/JUNE 2022
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