Broadcasting the Brits
Posted on Apr 9, 2024 by FEED Staff
Who dares, wins
Red carpets are places of glitz, glamour and – in the event of this year’s Brits – cutting-edge Camera to Cloud technology
Sponsored editorial
Launched in 1977, the Brit Awards with Mastercard are the annual showcase for the UK music industry.
The awards, as well as the general public’s music tastes, have evolved substantially since its launch, and it now boasts diverse genres and categories – as well as raking in millions in viewership numbers each year.
As a result, the production and live broadcast behind the annual show is now a multimedia banquet; with swathes of production companies descending to the red carpet to get their fair share of exclusive celebrity interviews and clickable social content.
“Bauer are official broadcast partners,” introduces Jo Parkerson, director of video at Bauer Media. “We partner with two awards: the best pop act and the best hip hop/grime/rap act. With our partnership, we get prime position on the red carpet and backstage access to the winners as they come off.”
Taking a risk
Parkerson leads the production, and with a crew of about 20, it appears that the planning behind Bauer’s Brits coverage is always a meticulous affair.
“We spend the week leading up to the Brits planning our content and developing a coverage plan. Following that, we create a workflow for the night,” explains Parkerson.
Always seeking to streamline the workflows for the more demanding and oftentimes unpredictable live events like the Brits, Parkerson’s team were specifically after a way to “get that content from the red carpet onto socials as quickly as possible, which is where conversation around Camera to Cloud came about.
“We were talking to Frame.io about collaborating – that’s when we started discussing Atomos’ Camera to Cloud offering. They showed us an example from Entertainment Tonight where they were using it in a red carpet scenario. I asked, ‘so you can get content from the camera on the red carpet to your editors in minutes?’ – to which they answered ‘yes!’
“That’s when I thought, if we are going to do a proof of concept to use Frame.io, then let’s add the Camera to Cloud workflow too. We took a bit of a risk to do it at the Brits, as it’s such a huge night for us and sits as a massive content opportunity for Bauer Media.”
Parkerson emphasises how the team had lined up a plan B: the usual, more convoluted approach of having someone running cards between editors and camera operators.
“From past experience, we don’t get content to editors for at least an hour after the first piece on the red carpet. We took a real punt on this.”
ALGORITHMS ON SIDE
Atomos advised Parkerson that the main ingredient to a successful Camera to Cloud recipe is strong connectivity. This posed a potential challenge – with the Brits’ O2 Arena not renowned for its signal capacity.
“Where we were positioned, we had access to wired Ethernet as well as Wi-Fi, so could plug directly into our Atomos Shoguns. We got there super early on the day, set it all up and it was working like a dream within minutes.
“Suddenly, I was presented with this production situation I had never experienced before. My digital lead was able to watch the interviews and features happening on the red carpet on her phone through the Frame.io app, as they were happening in real time – and start making decisions about what edits they wanted.
“You can comment on videos,” she continues, “do time coding, indicate which parts to use for TikTok, which parts to use for Instagram. Within a quarter of an hour of us doing our first chat on the red carpet, that content was starting to appear on key socials.
“The team to begin with were a bit worried that we hadn’t worked like this before, and put a huge element of trust into both me and Atomos’ solutions. At the end, we were hugs all round – with good reason to celebrate! We collectively found it to be such an easy, seamless workflow designed for video and content producers.”
Parkerson emphasises how the results truly spoke for themselves.
“We could actually get ahead of our competition, as the algorithms picked up that our content was going up first – even before the Brits official social media accounts!”
Video production is changing faster than ever before as it migrates to the cloud. Luckily, Camera to Cloud brings the cloud’s advantages directly to filmmakers, producers and video content creators.
First published in the Spring 2024 issue of FEED.
