Crowd pulling at BVE
Author: KitPlus
Published 1st April 2013
There is no better crowd puller at a trade show than a stand using equipment from multiple manufacturers being used in way it will be once unpacked by the customer.
This ethos is really the idea behind our monthly live studio show and was also the theme for our stand at this year’s BVE.
Pooling stands with Autocue was the first good move as it not only doubled our floor space but also meant we got to use the ever evolving Autocue Production System (APS – more on this next month) and of course their prompters. But this was only the start of our journey in building a complete tv studio, producing 3 two hour live shows and controlling a roaming camera crew interviewing exhibitors and streaming live for the entire time from within the ExCel venue.
This challenge required massive support from within the broadcast community and here is how it went…..
Two Sony PMW-150 plus a PMW-200 were used in the studio and also for the roaming interviews. In the studio we used a selection of Marshall on camera monitors supplied by Cache Media greatly assisting in this environment. The Marshall range were also on show in the studio mounted in a Thinking Space Media Wall enabling visitors to see what was on our live PGM output.
The roaming PMW-200 was fitted on a Protech shoulder mount from Octica which allowed us to use the V-Lock PAG Link batteries plus their new PAG Powerhub providing a D-Tap to power the Litepanels Croma on-camera light for the roaming interviews (no more chewing through AA’s).
We used the VideoSys wireless transmitter to feed a live signal back to the studio which attached to the camera via V-Lock, the signal was also picked up on other stands thanks to the VideoSys technology. This assembly also had the Atomos Samurai on board so we could record locally on the camera SxS cards, on the Samurai and also on the studio switcher. We do like our back-ups! The camera was either shoulder mounted or placed on a Vinten blue 5 on a dolly. As we were streaming live all the time though the floor of ExCel was too uneven for the dolly in most cases so to avoid “sea sick tv” we took it off.
Our roaming crew comprised of presenter, cameraman and assistants preparing the next exhibitor. These needed talk back to the studio and our friends from RTS came to the rescue. We used a RTS basestation located at the studio, two directional antennas, beltpacks incl light weight single sided headsets PH-88 for the roaming crew and an additional headset for the basestation. It was a great solution that worked faultlessly.
For roaming mic’s we used the Sony UWP-V2 handheld and then for the studio we initially used the Sony UWP-V1 lavalier mics before realising that the ambient noise in ExCel was so excessive so we reverted to using two of the UWP-V2‘s.
So back to the studio for the 2 hour live show each day.....We were lucky enough to have Jonathan Harrison on hand and who better to sepc and adjust your lighting for you! With CirroLite’s help we not only erected a 5x4metre lighting truss but also kitted it out with the perfect set-up using two Celeb 200’s, a KinoFlo 4ft 4 bank, two Dedo focusing LED’s and two Vista Singles.
The forth feed into the Autocue Production Suite was from a Polecam PSP + with a narrow head and modified slip ring with a wire strut system using a Camera Corps 10x mini zoom camera for those unbelievably good (in the right hands) overhead sweeping shots. This output was also used for cut-away in the morning when the roaming crew needed a break for a minute or two.
Audio was controlled by a PreSonus mixer from Source Distribution on the studio production desk. Support in the studio was provided by the Vinten blue 5 plus two Libecs from Ianiro.
Cabling for just about everything was supplied by Argosy.
We streamed via the Workstation Specialists PC running Wirecast from Telestream. Tariam Satellite Communications were on hand with great Tooway Newsspotter bandwidth and StreamUK looked after our streaming output.
All of this really cool gear was placed on an even cooler MW production desk offering us the space needed for the variety of keyboards and mixing gear.
Over the three days our stats show over 30,000 live sessions viewed at some point during the day and 4000 live sessions for the 2 hour chat show from 2pm to 4pm. Given that many of our potential viewers were actually at BVE then that’s not bad and we have the broadcast community to thank for helping us to make it happen!
Many of these manufacturers and distributors will be on tour with us in May.