IBC
Behind
the scenes of ITV’s summer hit that has sold all over the world to countries
including Germany, Australia and Finland.
The
dramatic entanglements of Love Island’s contestants are nothing if not minutely
documented. But less well known is how every kiss, mugging off and argument is
captured, analysed, clipped and aired for almost instant public consumption.
The
fourth season of the hit ITV2 show, produced by ITV Studios, regularly pulls in
around three million viewers keen to follow every move of the islanders
holidaying in a villa on the east coast of Mallorca.
The
matchmaking show is stripped weekdays into hour-long episodes for eight weeks
until the end of July and uses a total of 73 cameras, four more than the 2017
season.
The
post production demands and fly-away kit has grown too, which - given the
confines of the space in and around the villa - forced ITV to locate its
production hub, post and uplink facilities 5km away.
“This
is the biggest challenge for this series,” explains ITV Studios’ Technical
Manager Steve Kruger, who works on the show.
“The
size of the production has grown in tandem with the show’s popularity so while
we have a gallery up at the villa, we are sending links back to the Edit
Village in a second site.”
Local links
The distance between the villa and the Edit Village (3.2km by line of sight) also crossed many different landowners and multiple roads ruling out the conventional use of fibre. Instead the connection is made by various microwave and RF kit using technology supplied and managed by Timeline.
The distance between the villa and the Edit Village (3.2km by line of sight) also crossed many different landowners and multiple roads ruling out the conventional use of fibre. Instead the connection is made by various microwave and RF kit using technology supplied and managed by Timeline.
Fourteen
HD video feeds (all 30Mb/s H.264) are multiplexed together and sent between
locations over two separate technologies for redundancy. The primary path is an
ASI Streams on two 7GHz RF links, the secondary path is Video over IP on a
75GHz (2Gb/s) link.
One
of the bigger challenges faced with the multiple sites was providing the Edit
Village access to both the contestant mics as well as all the hidden and
effects mics. After researching various solutions working with the latency of
the IP link, ITV went with DANTE over IP into a boom recorder.
“Embedding
of timecode into a channel of the DANTE feed as well as onto a channel of the
encoded video feeds has enabled very accurate co-timing of audio and video,”
explains Kruger.
ITV
has also beefed up the tech that underlies the editing process. “Because we are
editing multiple cameras yet still need to meet regular fast turnaround times
we upgraded storage from Avid ISIS 7500 to Avid Nexis and now edit at DNxHD120
(rather than MPEG50 as previously) which has increased the stability of the
edit suites especially when editing a combination of multicam and third party
FX plug-ins.”
The
Nexis can store 360 Terabytes but even this is dwarfed by the 500TB of nearline
storage. As video feeds come into post around the clock it is recorded by
multiple EVS XT3 servers with a copy of each 20-minute chunk of media sent to
the Nexis for editing and another copy transcoded to MPEG50 and sent to the
nearline.
While
the Nexis storage is constantly pruned as episodes are finished the nearline is
designed to hold all the feeds for the production’s duration.
Remote camera capture
No plotting or canoodling couple can escape the cameras dotted around the villa itself. The garden area is patrolled by four manned Sony HDC-2500 line cameras with Canon XJ86 box lenses, and an array of Panasonic AW-HE130 hotheads “which operate very well under low light conditions”, according to Kruger.
No plotting or canoodling couple can escape the cameras dotted around the villa itself. The garden area is patrolled by four manned Sony HDC-2500 line cameras with Canon XJ86 box lenses, and an array of Panasonic AW-HE130 hotheads “which operate very well under low light conditions”, according to Kruger.
Two
additional waterproof AW-HR140 units are at poolside, one of which is mounted
on a Luna Remote Systems railcam dolly. “In extreme weather we can leave those
two exposed,” says Kruger.
In
the controlled lighting environment inside the villa, Panasonic AW-HE40 PTZs
are fitted. Also new for 2018 are five rackable Marshall Electronics’ minicams
covering the make-up mirrors and for wide shots of the dressing room and
bedroom. The camera control system is a Robotronics system provided by NEP.
“It’s
quite remarkable that we can control sixty-odd cameras with just two operators
when years ago that would have been unheard of,” says Kruger. “For Celebrity
Love Island in 2005 every PTZ camera had a separate manual controller.”
The
radio mics worn by the contestants have been upgraded by Canadian developer Q5X
to be fully waterproofed and also rechargeable, saving the production the
expense of carting around hundreds of batteries (there are two mic packs per
contestant).
“In
the first series we had some mics damaged by water from around the pool area so
we worked with Q5X to refine the kit,” says Kruger. “Now a contestant could
jump in the pool and the transmitters and mic capsules wouldn’t suffer long
term damage plus we don’t have to deal with the often fiddly and unsightly aqua
packs.
“Generally,
they are worn on the arm or in a bumbag but we can also clip them onto floats
in the pool and keep them at water level to continue transmitting.”
All
cameras, audio and the gallery facilities are provided by NEP.
Production workflow
One aspect that remains manual is the logging process. Teams of three loggers in shifts transcribe conversations and use hotkeys to capture every event from the raw footage into a searchable database. They perform this using a bespoke reality TV Content Management System (CMS) devised by Australian post house Cutting Edge. Versions of the software were used on I’m a Celebrity and in Africa on ITV2’s Survival of the Fittest.
One aspect that remains manual is the logging process. Teams of three loggers in shifts transcribe conversations and use hotkeys to capture every event from the raw footage into a searchable database. They perform this using a bespoke reality TV Content Management System (CMS) devised by Australian post house Cutting Edge. Versions of the software were used on I’m a Celebrity and in Africa on ITV2’s Survival of the Fittest.
Explains
Kruger: “We have looked at using artificial intelligence to automate the
logging process but found that with the varying accents involved and the speed
at which people talk combined with recording live in the field where mic
positions are not always ideal, that reliability was an issue. We also tested
it for transcribing conversations from the beach hut (diary room) but at this
stage AI is just not accurate enough.”
The
loggers, sited in the gallery, work on two different stories – dubbed Stream A
and Stream B – from twelve main video feeds. Each Stream has a reality
director, hothead operator and audio director assigned to it.
The
CMS logs are then used by the Story Producers and Edit Producers and turned
into ‘CMS Scenes’ which are then linked to media on the Nexis and handed on to
the editors to begin the edit process. The story editors are all editing on
Avid Media Composer and the four finishing suites are fitted with Avid
Symphony.
“The
turnaround time from something happening in the villa to being available to an
editor in post is 20 minutes,” says Kruger.
The
social media team has doubled this year too. The team is based on site using
two dedicated Avids to clip up content from the previous night into packages
for upload to ITV.com and mainstream social networks like Facebook, Twitter and
Instagram. Publication is generally timed around lunchtime in the UK in order
to tease that evening’s broadcast.
Playout from the island
The show is also played out from Mallorca, beginning with a complete playout at 8pm (GMT) each evening direct to ITV Hub’s operational HQ.
The show is also played out from Mallorca, beginning with a complete playout at 8pm (GMT) each evening direct to ITV Hub’s operational HQ.
Love
Island was a huge hit on ITV’s online platform in 2017 with many viewers
choosing to stream it live rather than via ITV2. However, the on-demand version
of the show in 2017 was delayed by a half hour meaning viewers couldn’t pause
and rewind.
That
has been addressed this time around. “There was a big push this year to ensure the
programme is available on the Hub for on-demand as soon as we come off air with
the TX,” says Kruger. “So, we’re playing out to the Hub an hour earlier so the
team there can start ingesting and compressing the files both ready for ITV’s
Native Hub and also send over to Virgin, Sky and other Hub partners.”
Uplink
is handled out of Timeline’s RF1 truck by an EVS operator, a PA, uplink
engineer and Kruger himself.
At
9pm (BST) the Mallorca team roll live to air from an EVS sending via two
separate satellites and downlinked in two locations in the UK to minimise risk
of exposure from bad weather.
As
soon as that is over, the Mallorca team reversion the entire programme for
worldwide distribution, sending a file back to the ITV Studios Global
Entertainment team in the UK for those overseas broadcasters that have brought
the series such as TVNZ and Channel Nine in Australia.
Among
other things this entails swapping out any music for which the show doesn’t own
international rights.
Any
calls for viewer action – such as votes – are closed half an hour after TX and
with teams immediately taking the results of the vote to compile into the next
day’s programme.
As
this season draws to its inevitable climax watched by millions, you can bet the
production values and technical complexity will be move up another notch next
year.
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