Diamond Jubilee: by royal appointment

Broadcast 
http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/techfacils/production-feature/diamond-jubilee-by-royal-appointment/5042633.article

The state occasion of the Diamond Jubilee is unprecedented in the scale of its outside broadcast. Adrian Pennington reports on the key broadcasters’ production plans.

“This is the equivalent of three Royal Weddings in different locations, shot back to back,” says Ben Weston, BBC executive editor for the Queen’s Jubilee. “In terms of logistics and infrastructure, it really is three to four times the size of the wedding. So it’s a challenge by any yardstick.”

The BBC is shouldering the bulk of live coverage of the Jubilee, beginning with the Queen’s ritual attendance at the Epsom Derby on 2 June, to be produced by Sunset+Vine for BBC Sport. From there, it leads the pooled broadcast of the Thames Diamond Pageant; acts as exclusive rights holder and broadcaster for the concert on 4 June; and shares coverage – with ITN and Sky – of the procession along Whitehall and The Mall to Buckingham Palace on 5 June.

Technical planning began in earnest last October, but the designs for the concert, a BBC ambition, were kicked off well over a year ago. “We’ve previously helped organise televised concerts from the garden of Buckingham Palace and the original thinking was to do that again, before deciding to bring the whole thing out front,” says Weston.

Alongside the royal household, planning for the weekend involved the DCMS, the Cabinet Office, the City of London, the Metropolitan Police, St Paul’s Cathedral and the Diamond Jubilee Trust.

The pageant promises to be the most spectacular and challenging of the set pieces, since nothing of this magnitude has been attempted before.

The seven mile route from Battersea to Tower Bridge will be covered with more than 90 cameras positioned on bridges or buildings or on board the 1,000-boat flotilla. Kit and crew from 10 scanners are supplied by Arena, Arqiva, CTV and NEP Visions, with SIS Live managing links and satellite connectivity. “The flotilla itself is five to six miles long, which dwarfs the Boat Race as an editorial challenge,” says Weston. “When you include mustering and dispersal of the flotilla, it covers between 15 and 20 miles of river, travelling at 5 knots over four hours [live TX is planned for 2.5 hours]. Editorially, we have to be at the heart of action on the Thames to celebrate life in the capital through the prism of our maritime heritage.”

Core to this effort are eight discretely placed, remote-controlled pan & tilt HD cameras on the royal barge itself, offering shots of the royal family and POVs of the flotilla. These feeds are controlled in a specially converted production/engineering space below decks by two camera ops and a vision engineer, cut by a director then transferred over RF to radio masts positioned along the embankment. A fifth crew member will supervise the RF link to shore.

Unprecedented scale

A specialist Smarthead camera system has been devised and installed by Aerial Camera Systems (ACS), the firm that fitted Westminster Abbey with multiple specialist cameras for the Royal Wedding. “As an event, it is largely unrehearsable,” says Chris Bretnall, BBC lead technical producer. “We’ve been out on the Royal barge when nobody has been looking and test recorded as much as we can along the length of the route, but the pageant’s scale is totally unprecedented.”

RF feeds from the barge will be mixed with wireless feeds from nine other BBC-rigged boats including the main presentation vessel, Zephyr, and another rowed by Ben Fogle. Countless other professional news crews and members of the public with mobile devices will contend for spectrum on the day. All RF will be co-ordinated and licensed by band management specialists JFMG, with a comprehensive trunk radio systems a back-up to the public mobile system.

All RF and fixed links up and down the river will be sent to a central ingest point and from there to the BBC’s technical hub at Canada Gate. Terrestrial pictures will be supported by aerial shots from two helicopters – one BBC, one Sky – with onboard cameras and uplinks to guarantee reception of pictures from the royal barge for its entire journey.

Sky is dedicating all day to the pageant and fielding 20 to 25 of its own cameras, to mix with pooled pictures, including those from the Royal Barge.

The concert should be a more straightforward 25-camera OB, with the stage design, by Mark Fisher, architect of U2’s 360 Tour, presenting the main challenge as it has to circumnavigate the Victoria Memorial. Up to 100,000 fans are anticipated to line The Mall, in addition to the 22,000 invited audience.

Directed by Geoff Posner, whose credits include Live 8 and the Eurovision Song Contest, the concert will be aired live on BBC1 and Radio 2. ABC has exclusive rights in the US through BBC Worldwide, which is also selling VoD rights.

Broadcaster pooling

Live broadcast to paying customers in cinemas was rejected as it risked compromising the agreement for the likes of Stevie Wonder and Kylie Minogue waiving their fees.

NEP Visions is supplying its pair of Gemini trucks fitted with LDK 8000 cameras, techno cranes and a Vortex 30m vertical rising camera. ACS is supplying a Cineflex stabilised camera gimbal rigged to a hoist as a high beauty cam. Stage audio is captured by Britannia Row and mixed into 5.1 by Toby Allington, and presentation will be added in the master transmission truck.

For the final procession set-piece, there’s more conventional pooling. The route has been divided between the BBC, ITN and Sky in a three-way arrangement to save costs.

“It’s logistically more complex than the Royal Wedding, with more elements, more stakeholders and a longer route,” explains Emma Hoskyns, head of special events at ITV News. ITN commissioned six OB vans from Telegenic, Prolink, CTV and Visions for its own presentation and provision of pooled pictures of the route to Guildhall and Mansion House.

Sky’s pool responsibility is from Trafalgar Square to St Paul’s using 18 cameras and the services of Visions and Neon Broadcast. It will also have a 3-4 camera studio at Canada Gate and numerous other cameras around the capital and regions.

“We want to offer a lightness of touch, to capture the mood of the nation not just in London but at street parties up and down the country,” says Neil Dunwoodie, Sky’s executive producer.

“Our tone will be warm and authoritative but not obsequious,” says Cristina Nicolotti Squires, ITV News’ executive producer of Diamond Jubilee coverage. “I want to have a conversation with viewers and make them feel they have a front row seat.”

ITN crews will be covering community celebrations outside London and viewers will be encouraged to participate by tweeting comments and sending pictures to ITV.com/news for second screen interaction. “The programme will drive people to the site and the site will engage people in the on-air programme,” says Nicolotti Squires. “It’s about having a national conversation.”

The BBC is organising pooled coverage from the service of thanksgiving at St Paul’s, where CTV will offer a 25-camera mix of steadicams, tracking dollies, jimmy jibs and ACS Smarthead remotes. SIS Live won the job of providing pool coverage from the Westminster Hall, venue of a celebratory luncheon.

The one element that can’t be guaranteed is the weather. ITN, for example, has presenter areas which are covered but open to the elements. “The mood, ahead of the Olympics, is about how great it is to be British and the weather is a part of that story,” says Nicolotti Squires. “You can’t have a front row seat without getting wet.”

QUEEN’S JUBILEE 

Coverage at-a-glance

• 2 June Queen’s regular attendance at the Epsom Derby kicks off the weekend’s coverage.
• 3 June Thames Diamond Pageant sees a 1,000-boat flotilla accompany the Royal Barge from Battersea to Tower Bridge.
• 4 June Concert outside Buckingham Palace, with up to 100,000 fans expected to line the Mall, in addition to the 22,000 invited audience.
• 5 June Following a service at  St Paul’s, a procession along Whitehall and The Mall to Buckingham Palace forms the set-piece climax to celebrations.

Full stream ahead for 3D

Broadcast

Broadcast format issues have limited the number of 3D channels. Could a new breed of VoD services for connected devices take off with viewers?

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With the 3D market caught between the rock of original content and a hard place to watch it on, some see 3D streaming as a way out of the impasse.

There are approximately 55 3D channels and demo channels around the world, plus at least another 35 VoD services offering 3D movie content, according to Futuresource Consulting. It expects that to rise by 15-20 channels and/or 3D VoD services this year, many across connected devices.

Anthony Geffen, chief executive of Flying Monsters and Life of Plants 3D producer Atlantic Productions, says: “If you are looking to finance a 3D film, you will have a problem if you rely solely on VoD, but for projections and add-on revenue, you have to take it seriously. Particularly outside Europe and the US, where 3D is limited in terms of channels, 3D VoD services make real sense.”

IHS Screen Digest senior analyst Tom Morrod says: “3D VoD will probably be an important interchange as broadcast 3D is still problematic. There isn’t a broadcast format that preserves HD quality within the same stream, is backwards compatible and doesn’t take up significantly more bandwidth. VoD gets around this by not being confined to broadcast bandwidth. It has similar capacity issues to IP or broadcast VoD transmission, but these are easier to overcome without a new broadcast format being agreed or implemented.”

With pay-TV operators such as Virgin offering a fairly limited choice of on-demand 3D movies, the charge is being led by manufacturers of 3D technology, which have a vested interest in making more content available to drive hardware sales. Samsung and Sony launched 3D VoD apps on their flagship 3D TVs last year, both primarily filled with taster material such as pop videos, movie trailers and sports highlights. Samsung recently went a step further, signing a deal with NBC Universal and other, unnamed content partners for converted 3D versions of shows such as Battlestar Galactica.

Launching soon in the US is rental service 3DGO! from Canada’s Sensio Technologies. The app will work only with devices that support the company’s Hi-Fi 3D compression technology, which so far includes Vizio 3D TVs and TCL, the leading Chinese TV brand.

“There is no sustainable, commercial 3D TV model at the moment,” says Sensio executive vice-president and chief marketing officer Richard LaBerge. “There isn’t a large enough footprint of 3D TVs and channels are mostly subsidised, with the dilemma that there is not enough content to justify consumer spend. The real deal for the next three to four years is VoD.”

3DGO! will offer about 60 titles on launch, including studio catalogue titles, concerts, sport and other events, with the door open to UK producers.

“We are looking at any good 3D content but we will reject anything poorly converted,” says LaBerge. “We have a quality-control process and converted material has to be of extremely high quality for us to accept it.”

Plans include the addition of pay-per-view 3D sport and music events through a joint venture with French music producer Séquence (see box).

Mobile streaming

Meanwhile, 3D display manufacturer MasterImage 3D is readying its own content portal for launch in the second half of this year, offering streaming to mobile devices in conjunction, it says, with a major consumer electronics brand. National Geographic and Red Bull Media are lined up to supply the content.

“We are talking to the studios as well,” says display executive vice-president Roy Taylor. “We’d love to be more engaged in Europe. We are already working with Orange and we are reaching out to Sky.”

Taylor says MasterImage 3D is talking to big manufacturers about launching in the autumn. “They are actively pushing me to make connections in Europe about 3D content.”

MasterImage’s business is in auto-stereoscopic display technology for smartphones, tablets, in-car and in-flight systems. But the portal will work only with hardware that has integrated its technology.

“Ideally, we would only build and deliver screens, but 3D is so new, we have to be involved in the whole ecosystem and help to solve the commercialisation of mobile 3D devices,” Taylor says. “You can’t just offer consumers a movie and a game at purchase. They want a continued pipeline of content.”

He says the service could be expanded onto 3D TVs – however, “our launch strategy, as a mobile 3D product, is to help seed that business opportunity. We see glasses-free mobile devices as the vehicle to bring 3D content into the home.”

Another Canadian firm, Spatial View, launched one of the first 3D streaming stores, 3DeeCentral, last year. It has since largely divested its core business in manufacturing 3D auto-stereoscopic displays to concentrate on its library of 200 eclectic indie 3D titles, which include a concert by Peter Gabriel (below).

Spatial View continues to produce overlays for 3D handsets and laptops that can turn, for example, an iPhone 4 into a glasses-free 3D viewing device. “As a complement to these products, and to stimulate adoption of 3D in the market, we needed to provide content for people to buy,” says Spatial View chief operating officer Al Lopez.

Paul Berrow, chief executive of Log Media, believes the penetration of 3D-enabled smartphones and tablets will have “a profound effect on the appetite of the younger audience, and for good reason – it’s a great viewing experience. When you can choose between HD 2D or HD 3D to watch extreme sports, for example, the 3D experience on these devices is far better. The only thing really holding back the boom is the necessity to wear glasses.”

By most accounts, the 3D industry is in a slump and likely to remain there until a critical mass of displays reaches the market. But while the content market is tough, few think it is going to die out.

The installed base of 3D-capable households will grow significantly over the next five years as new TVs will come with 3D as standard, says Futuresource. Approximately 800,000 (3%) of UK households will own a 3D TV by the end of 2012, and by 2015, close to half of all households are expected to be 3D capable.

“Since the end of 2011, the industry has been in a chasm,” says LaBerge. “The dilemma is that there is not enough content to justify consumer spend. The fact that the first generation of 3D TVs used expensive shutter glasses did not help, and then there is the inconvenience of using 3D – for example, it can be complicated for the user to switch between 2D and 3D channels.

“However, the industry will begin to see improvement in the volume, quality and monetisation of content as the footprint of 3D TV sets grows in 2013.”

CASE STUDY
SENSIO/SÉQUENCE LIVE MUSIC DEAL

A series of live 3D events is to be broadcast from Paris in a joint venture between Montreal’s Sensio Technologies and French music production specialist Séquence SDP.

The live 3D concerts will be screened in Sensio’s network of around 900 cinemas worldwide, and will later be available via the 3DGO! VoD app.

Sensio apparently has the backing of a major record label but won’t divulge which one. Confirmation of the first concert artist is pending.

“We are following the same model as the successful live-to-cinema transmissions of performances from the Met Opera,” explains executive vice-president Richard LaBerge. “Unlike sport, where much of the value lies in watching live, concerts lend themselves to time delay and VoD, so you can generate more revenue from the same production.