Set in the majestic grounds of the Chateau de Beauregard, and in its eleventh year, the festival is an eclectic mix of homegrown French talent and international artists spanning pop, rock, punk and dance. We made the hop across the channel to find out more.
With a diverse lineup - where else can you find Tears for Fears, Disclosure, Snow Patrol, Fatboy Slim and Limp Bizkit sharing the same bill? - Festival Beauregard is one of France’s biggest festivals.
“We delivered live big-screen coverage for both the main stage, called Scène Beauregard, and the second stage, Scène John,” begins Alexis Grandin, co-founder of F&G Productions.
For Scène Beauregard, F&G relied on a multicam, SMPTE fibre solution featuring five Ursa Broadcasts and an Atem 2 m/e switcher, while Scène John’s video package consisted of Panasonic cameras and a Ross carbonite mixer. The video crew for the whole event totalled 18 people.
“We’ve been big fans of Blackmagic’s live production hardware for some time now, and this year we took the decision to invest in their cameras too. We have not been disappointed,” says Alexis.
“Historically, we’d hire in cameras, but over time, those costs can quickly mount up, and we were finding it harder, and harder to justify. You get a lot of bang for your buck with the Ursa Broadcast, and at such a reasonable price, it only made our decision to buy all that bit easier.”
He adds: “Paired with the Blackmagic fiber solution, we also now get all our video, sound, comms and power down a single cable which is a big advantage for us.”
All paired with Fujinon optics, camera positions for the main stage included one front of house, one on a jib crane and three cameras shoulder mounted, one of which was wireless. Alexis says, “We chose these particular positions as artists require us to be as discrete as possible, and the small form factor of the Ursa help us to do that.
“We’ve also been impressed by the camera’s performance in low light,” he continues. “Even when we had to push the gain levels up to 12db, we still didn’t see any noise creeping in after dark.”
F&G used the built-in waveform monitoring on a Smartscope Duo 4K along with an Atem hardware CCU to color manage the incoming camera signals, ensuring each of the ISO camera feeds from the Ursa Broadcast is consistent throughout the course of the day.
Screens stage left and right at Scène Beauregard were 5m x 4m each, and the control room was located 100m away in an Algeco building where the Atem desk and Atem 1 m/e control panel were used for vision mixing.
A bespoke solution built around Caspar CG software and a bunch of Decklink I/O, which provides a fill and key signal, was used for graphics and VT playout.
“We also recorded some artists’ performances from the gallery to SD cards for post event highlights packages, relying on a series of Hyperdeck studio minis,” Alexis adds. “Sometimes though, a group would just want a direct ISO recording from the jib camera, and thanks to the built-in SDHC slot, we were able to facilitate those requests.
“Another artist request was making the image on-screen black and white. They thought it was a big ask, but we were able to do it straight away with the control panel, and they were pleased with our responsiveness,” adds Alexis.
“We’ve found it really easy and quick to install and setup our entire production, which saves a lot of time and means we are able to focus more on customer requests. We are less tired, which in this industry, is a massive bonus.”
