The Royal Wedding

Broadcast

Next week, Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding is expected to attract more than 2 billion global viewers. Adrian Pennington gets the inside story on TV’s biggest ever live OB.

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/techfacils/production-feature/the-royal-wedding/5026344.article

The list of the UK’s biggest TV ratings smashes is dominated by royal occasions, but coverage of Prince William and Kate Middleton’s nuptials is predicted to dwarf them all with the largest worldwide TV audience in history for a single event.

On 29 April, more than 2 billion global TV viewers – twice the audience of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony and almost three times the audience for the wedding of Charles and Diana in 1981 – are expected to tune in, with an additional 400 million keeping up with events via live streaming, radio and social networks.

FACT FILE

Top 10 rated UK TV broadcasts

1 1966 World Cup Final, BBC/ITV 32.30m

2 Funeral of Princess Diana, 1997, BBC1/ITV 32.10m

3 Royal family documentary, 1969, BBC1/ITV 30.69m

4 EastEnders: Den divorces Angie, 1986, BBC1 30.15m

5 Apollo 13 splashdown, 1970, BBC1/ITV 28.6m

6 FA Cup replay: Chelsea v Leeds, 1970, BBC1/ITV 28.49m

7 Royal wedding: Charles and Diana, 1981, BBC/ITV 28.40m

8 Royal wedding: Anne and Mark Phillips, 1973, BBC1 27.60m

9 Coronation Street: Alan Bradley killed by tram, 1989, ITV 26.93m

10 Only Fools And Horses: Batman and Robin (below), 1996, BBC1 24.35m

While contingency plans for covering state funerals are constantly updated by broadcasters, planning for this day began as soon as the couple announced their engagement in January. It has not been without political manoeuvring, as ITV, Sky and the BBC must pool resources while working out how to win the ratings war.

Coverage will be shared from select camera positions along the route, including vantage points at Buckingham Palace, cranes and, during the service itself, from inside Westminster Abbey. The BBC is in charge of the latter and will make the HD feed available, independent of editorial and graphics, to ITN, which will have its own cameras at the entrance to the Abbey and is also providing pictures both to Sky News and ITV.

Since NEP Visions is producing the BBC’s live feed of the Queen’s visit to the Abbey on Maundy Thursday, 21 April, its HD4 truck will remain at the Abbey to cover the wedding eight days later.

“We will cable and rig for the Royal Maundy Service and then re-cable and add more cameras for the wedding,” says Brian Clark, NEP Visions’ commercial director. “We’ll have no fl ypacks or OB facilities spare that weekend.”

More than 20 manned and fixed cameras will be rigged inside the Abbey, including 14 cameras built and installed by SIS LIVE, one of which will be mounted on the ceiling looking down onto the Abbey interior. Outside the Abbey, ITN, Sky News and the BBC will each populate the 1km route of the procession to Buckingham Palace with dozens of cameras.

TV’S BIGGEST EVENTS

4bn+ 2011 Marriage of Kate and William (estimated)

1bn 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony

1bn 2010 Chilean miners rescue

750m 1981 Marriage of Charles and Diana

700m 2010 Fifa World Cup

111m 2011 Super Bowl

106m 1983 Last episode of M*A*S*H

Source: BFI

Due to the pressure on resources, most of the UK’s OB suppliers are being roped in. Arena TV is deploying its OB12 and OB14 trucks for the BBC, as well as helicopters for aerial shots along the ceremonial route, while ITN has called on vans from CTV, Telegenic, Prolink and Visions.

SIS LIVE claims to be a key supplier, with facilities including six OB units, a specialist sound truck, 13 uplink units and an array of RF communications including 13 radio cameras, 32 UHF radio-talkback systems, and at least 35 talkback circuits provided by fi bre or satellite.

More than 180 of its staff will be on duty and most of its 40 satellite uplink trucks will be out covering the story for clients that number domestic broadcasters, plus TV2DK, NBC News, Dome Productions and France Televisions.

Key negotiations

There will be more than 150 OB cameras fielded for the BBC, ITN and Sky alone, in addition to dozens of cameras held by broadcasters’ roving news crews, not including the army of international broadcasters. A further 130 OB vans will be corralled in a media compound at Green Park and temporary studios are being erected adjacent to this at Canada Gate.

According to one source, the necessary spectrum to accommodate RF links from all broadcasters has required some intricate acts of diplomacy between the key players.

“It’s been a massive project with lots of negotiation between stakeholders, including the Palace, the police, Westminster Abbey, the DCMS and other broadcasters,” says ITN special projects editor Emma Hoskyns. “It is one day of huge significance, so we have to get it right.”

Planning for the event is in many ways similar to a general election, where channels keep presentational tricks, graphics and special guests up their sleeves.

“We will have some unique camera positions, but as much as we want to win a large audience, this is also about critical acclaim,” says Cristina Nicolotti Squires, ITV’s executive producer of royal wedding coverage. “I hope we make an entertaining and interesting programme.”

The BBC has arranged for reporter Jake Humphrey to commentate on a Battle of Britain fly-past of the Palace from inside a Lancaster bomber, although aerial shots from the plane will be shared with ITN.

According to Sky News’ royal wedding executive producer Kate McAndrew: “The Palace made it very clear that William was running the show. He wants it to be fun, modern and a day to remember, and that’s what we are trying to refl ect.”

Coverage of at least some of the ceremony in stereo 3D was lobbied for. Sky even filmed a mock wedding and offered a 3D demonstration at Windsor’s Guards Chapel, but Clarence House finally vetoed it.

“They decided that the 3D camera was going to be too big for the Abbey and felt there was not a good enough trade-off considering, in their view, that the audience for it was too small,” says McAndrew.

Another source suggests that the proposed position of the 3D rig was in direct conflict with the seat of a guest king. The lack of 3D is a shame considering that the 1954 coronation was captured partly in experimental 3D using twin film cameras, as shown in Renegade Pictures’ The Queen In 3D, which aired on C4 last year.

Interest in the wedding from US broadcasters is particularly intense. NBC is basing 50 of a rumoured 300- strong contingent at ITN’s Gray’s Inn Road HQ, where it will hire studios, edit suites and a production base. NBC and other broadcasters including Germany’s ZDF, Australia’s 7 Network and Network 10, and Canada’s

CTV, are thought to have paid up to £200,000 each to access ITN’s feed of the build-up and ceremony, over which they will lay their own graphics and commentary.

Global broadcast

The BBC says the wedding will be its biggest ever single-day operation. Its coverage, led by Huw Edwards will be distributed live to ABC Australia, ABC America, on the BBC Entertainment channel across Asia, India, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East, and on BBC Knowledge in Africa.

“It’s the first time in recent memory that a single BBC1 presentation will be broadcast around the world,” said a spokesperson for the broadcaster. Comparisons will undoubtedly be made with the wedding of Charles and Diana 30 years ago. “I did recently watch our coverage of it,” says ITV’s Nicolotti Squires. “Time has moved on in terms of the set and graphics looking very old-fashioned. However, the opening script sounded very much like the one I have just written. The sense of occasion will be the same.”

ONLINE COVERAGE

“Thirty years on from Charles and Diana’s wedding, we can see a huge leap in communications media,” refl ects Gannon Hall, executive vice-president, global marketing, at KIT Digital. “The scale, the media delivery, the user experience are all transformed, and it is set to be one of the biggest single events viewed online ever.”

KIT Digital has contracts with AP, Reuters, Disney, ABC, Getty Images and MSN to syndicate live streams and edited highlights.

 Its content services team will take the raw satellite feed and edit it into two-to-four-minute segments, localised with translation in one of 15 languages and customised with graphics. The clips will also be delivered to an online market place for any station to purchase. Integration with Facebook and Twitter is offered.

Sky News and CNN will deliver streamed video and on-demand highlights to respective iPad, iPhone and Android phone apps.

Sky will also edit user-generated content gathered from across the UK on the day into a programme, Your Royal Wedding, to air in the evening on Sky News. ITV will stream its TV feed simultaneously to itv.com alongside a user-generated photo gallery.

OB firms line up for royal wedding

Broadcast

NEP Visions has landed the plum role of exclusively covering the royal wedding ceremony from inside Westminster Abbey - but the event is so large that nearly all the UK’s OB firms are involved, with SIS LIVE claiming to be supplying more facilities than any other.

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/techfacils/ob-firms-line-up-for-royal-wedding/5026375.article

Organised by the BBC, NEP will cover the service inside the Abbey and the pictures will be made available to ITN, which is supplying HD coverage to Sky News, ITV and international broadcasters.

The OB company is also producing the BBC’s live feed of the queen’s visit to the Abbey on Maundey Thursday, and its HD4 truck will be in situ for two weeks prior to the event.

More than 20 manned and fixed NEP cameras will be rigged in the Abbey, including 14 specialised cameras built and installed by SIS LIVE. One will be mounted on the ceiling, providing an overhead shot.

Outside, ITN, Sky and the BBC will cover the processional route from vantage points on Buckingham Palace and buildings around Admiralty Arch.

Arena TV is deploying two trucks and helicopters for pooled shots, while ITN has called on vans from CTV, Telegenic, Prolink and Visions.

SIS LIVE is supplying six OB units, a specialist sound truck, 13 uplink units and an array of RF communications including 13 radio cameras.

Most of its 40 satellite uplink trucks are contracted for clients including TV2DK, NBC News, Dome Productions and France Televisions.

Singapore opens for business

Broadcast

The Southeast Asian state is wooing Western media firms to help build its digital economy, but its reputation as an outsourcing hub will take time to displace.

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/techfacils/production-feature/singapore-opens-for-business/5026189.article

With budgetary pressure and an increasingly competitive labour market, UK production companies and individual talent might cast an eye towards Singapore, where the government is pumping billions of pounds into kick-starting a TV, film and digital media industry.

The Southeast Asian nation-state is intent on building a world-class media production hub from scratch, and wants to achieve it by the end of the decade.

Its Media Development Authority (MDA) has identifi ed media and entertainment, in particular interactive and digital media, as one of the country’s major sources of revenue, and plans to raise the value of media exports threefold to £29bn by 2015.

To get there, it is rolling out a nationwide 1Gbps broadband network, has a £254m pot for incubating new digital technologies, and has allocated £93m for media development over the next five years.

At the same time, educational institutions are supplementing their traditional mathematical, engineering and medical programmes with animation, games and visual effects courses to provide a skilled labour pool.

While this is intended to lay the foundations for 80,000 new media jobs, the territory is largely servicing US and European fi rms that outsource work to employees on lower salaries while posting foreign talent to senior creative and managerial positions.

Knowledge transfer
“We are taking a bottoms-up approach to growing the digital media industry,” explains Bernard Sieu Kar Wei, head of Infocomms and Media, a division of Singapore’s Economic Development Board. “The aim is to build a sustainable industry, which in the first instance requires the knowledge transfer of companies outside Singapore, but will in turn generate a critical mass of homegrown talent to create our own IP.”

The average annual wage for new, local recruits is £20,000, but there is demand for experienced overseas talent in roles such as games developer, modeller, animator or VFX supervisor, who could command higher than their current UK salaries while enjoying one of the world’s lowest personal tax regimes, capped at 20%.

“The technical skills base here is excellent but we still require the softer skills such as scriptwriters and directors,” says Ricky Ow, general manager of Sony Pictures Entertainment Asia.

Singapore is wooing Western companies with highly attractive financial packages. These range from a light corporate tax rate of 17% (which can be negotiated lower), to subsidised training, particularly for permanent Singaporean residents, or relocation schemes in return for investment in research and development.

“Direct company support is not infinite so the business case has to be enduring,” says Angeline Poh, director of Infocomm and Media. “We’re able to award tax and fi nancial incentives but we adopt a bespoke model of support for each company.”

The government keeps details strictly under wraps, and threatens to sue companies for breach of contract if they reveal them.

LucasFilm, which became the first major Western film-maker to set up in the region in 2005, stresses that its 400 artists, representing 6o nationalities, have moved beyond simple animation assembly and work for hire.

“There was no local talent when we arrived but we’ve invested, with the government, in media training courses and brought staff in from New Zealand, London and LA to mentor and grow the market,” says LucasFilm general manager Xavier Nicolas. “We trained students on TV animation and games disciplines, and we are now moving into animated features and VFX sequences - for example, on Transformers 3D.”

Nonetheless, all the concept art and post-production - the more creative and client-critical aspects - is still handled in LA.

Building experience
Soho VFX house Double Negative opened a Singapore branch last May, but doesn’t yet trust the operation to work on more than the heavy lifting of visual effects work for features like Iron Man 2 and Kick Ass.

2D supervisor Oliver Atherton helped set up the operation. “I’ve had to stay on longer because it has taken more time than we thought to train staff,” he says. “The work culture and technical skills are good; it is experience that is needed. We are now seeing better-quality recruits from the local colleges and we’re promoting staff we’ve trained into supervisory roles.”

Double Negative is located next to Media polis, a proposed £441m, 19 hectare production and studio complex. The fi rst phase, an 18,000 sq ft sound stage with green screen, will be ready in 2012.

Almost all of the existing sound stages in Singapore are occupied by MediaCorp, the state-owned broadcaster. By 2020, the new stages will be surrounded by digital media outfits, broadcast and post-production facilities, digital rights management and education institutions. LucasFilm is moving to an adjacent site next year “The purpose of the sound stage is to support digital and VFX productions but it will also be modular for TV-sized projects,” explains Poh. “We want to create a Soho-style cluster of media enterprises and we are talking to UK companies about locating here.”

Mediapolis’ business plan is still being nailed down by local post house Infinite Frameworks, which will manage the site. It will, however, compete with a larger studio being built by Pinewood Shepperton just over the border at Iskandar in Malaysia. Scheduled to open in 2013, it will provide more than 100,000 sq ft of film stages and nearly 60,000 sq ft of TV studios, plus post facilities.

Singapore is prepared to invest in co-productions, particularly in animation, and to make the domestic industry more competitive with tax breaks. The number of animation firms in Singapore has grown from 10 to 40 in five years and many are moving up the value chain.

Scrawl Studios (Singapore) and UK animator Bryant Whittle are codeveloping and producing 52 x 11-minutes of pre-school series Red, Yellow & Blue, while Singapore’s August Media Holdings recently acquired Edinburgh animator Red Kite (64 Zoo Lane) and signed a $60m deal with US media company Classic Media to develop and jointly produce 10 new shows for TV. They will be based on children’s classics from Classic Media’s catalogue, which includes Mister Magoo.

Under another recent deal, animation projects co-produced with Fremantle Media, through its Singapore office, will receive up to £2.2m in funding from the MDA. The government body has also earmarked £40m for five feature films, can provide seed money to entrepreneurs in the digital media space, and will match-fund co-productions.

South West Screen, with UK Trade and Investment money, has taken advantage of this by co-funding multiplatform projects. Eco Gone Mad, a factual entertainment web and TV format by Apostrophe Films (Singapore) and the UK’s Junction K, and animated series iLand, produced by Scrawl and Bristol’s Wonky Films, have each received £50,000 in funding.

In addition to public money, a $1.3bn (£800m) pot of venture capital has been ringfenced for film and TV projects.

With Asia Pacific media predicted to grow at 6.4 per cent a year to $475bn (£290m) in 2014 (according to PricewaterhouseCoopers), Singapore is positioning itself as the launch pad into the market. The country already hosts regional headquarters for broadcasters including Discovery, SPE, ESPN and HBO. Indie Off the Fence has a distribution office, and there is local distribution support from Ascent Media and Technicolor.

“Right now, all the work we do originates from Europe or the US, but the Asian market for visual effects is huge and we are using Singapore as a base to crack it,” reveals Double Negative operations manager Cosmas Lee.

“There are some rich stories in Asia from India to Malaysia and China that have yet to be exposed to a global market,” adds SPE’s Ow.

Beyond the basic economics, the initiative is viewed as culturally significant. “We want to grow games, VFX and animation as well as convergent media forms, but we see interactive media playing an integral role in every day life,” says Poh. “Digital visual literacy will be increasingly important as a global communications medium, and Singapore can lead the world in its development.”

With a highly educated population and little free land for industrial development, media technology is at the heart of Singapore’s economic strategy. While UK media braces itself for further cuts, Singapore’s government is committed to subsidising the next-generation digital media industry.