LEO flies under the 5G radar

InBroadcast

p20 http://europe.nxtbook.com/nxteu/lesommet/inbroadcast_202011/index.php?startid=20#/p/20

Communications play an indisputably vital part of modern life, and as current events show, satellite capabilities are more critical than ever.  

5G is the biggest buzzword of the day in the mobile industry, in the satellite biz the buzz is about low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellations.  “LEO satellites are an exciting opportunity,” says William Mudge, Director of Satellite Capacity and Technology, Speedcast. “For the first time, satellite can provide an office-like experience anywhere in the world –it is like making a call from one city to another in the same country.” 

Yet geostationary and Medium Earth Orbit satellites have not had their day.  Both have their place in the market. Broadcast is one example: a MEO link can deliver one signal to millions or homes or cable headends.  

The transition to 5G is going to be revolutionary for how we can transmit data but it is not the answer to anything.  If a customer is not working inside the cellular systems, it doesn’t provide the coverage they need, whether on a cruise ship in international waters, a mining camp or an energy platform.  That’s where something like LEO fits really well, delivering an at-home experience with none of the delays experienced with GEO satellites operating far from Earth.  

Speedcast has technologies, including SIGMA and SD-WAN, that can make the right choice of network for you.  While far from the cellular network, Speedcast automatically selects the GEO, MEO or LEO service that best meets the requirement.  When 4G LTE or 5G becomes available, it can detect that and automatically switch to the less expensive option. If the cellular connection fails for any reason, it switches to the always-on satellite connection. 

“As the technology keeps evolving, our job is to make sure that customers get the best of breed solution all the time,” says Mudge. 

The arrival of LEO, MEO, and flat panel antennas has seen the market seek solutions to achieve effective use of the spectrum and provide higher bandwidth for matching demand with reliable network technology. 

Integrasys created Beam Budget, a unique solution that enables accurate calculation of Link Budgets supporting LEO constellations and flat panel antennas. According to the company, Beam Budget has availability for any frequency band, including Q and V where high frequencies are more affected by atmospheric events. Thanks to Beam Budget, networks of small satellite constellations can be designed more effectively. 

It also has a range of low profile of flat panel antennas designed to make installations easier and faster. Their greatest advantage is the ability to create multibeams, which are able to point to different constellations simultaneously – driving Connected Car applications, for example. 

5G interference signals (and new mobile phone networks such as LTE, Wi-Max) are powerful enough to saturate sensitive C-band satellite receiving systems, causing a potential for total loss of service for broadcasters.  

Norsat International has launched products to address this. The 3200-sBPF PLL LNB (optimal for maritime terminal applications), combines an LNB and a Band Pass Filter and can switch in and out the filtering between full and concatenated portions of the C-Band spectrum. This allows customers to use the full C-band when they are at sea and switch in the 5G filtering when they are close to shore.  This is complementary to Norsat’s existing Band Pass Filter series of 5G Interference solutions.  

“As 5G wireless networks grow, there’s an increasing need for specialised products to mitigate interference from 5G base stations,” states Dr. Amiee Chan, CEO of Norsat. “We are excited to further help users of C-band satellite services reject 5G interference and to continue to be a part of the coordination efforts to ensure a smooth transition of 5G into the C-band spectrum.” 

Such solutions are being used by China’s Jiangsu broadcasting to prevent 5G interference on current broadcasting stations.  The broadcaster, headquartered in Nanjing and operating across China, was facing a lot of interference, with viewers receiving blurred images and videos. JSCN was rapidly losing viewers, and its core competitive advantage of clear broadcasting services was declining. This was because 5G in-band transmissions received by the broadcast antennas drove regular LNBs into saturation and produced unwanted intermodulation products which degraded the desired signal from the satellite. Adding Norsat’s 5G products however strengthened JSCN’s competitiveness for signal delivering.  

The design of new generation of satellites - multibeam HTS, LEO and MEO constellations - needs to be highly cost-effective and adaptive to the actual demand. Beam-hopping provides a level of flexibility that makes it possible to increase served traffic, reduce areas of unmet demand while enabling the reduction of power consumption on-board. 

In particular, SatixFy’s beam forming chip technology disrupts the satellite communication industry by creating the basis for digital electronically steered antennas, made for mobile platforms and for new and existing satellite constellations. 

With OneWeb, SatixFy plans to add a digital technology pathway payload with beam hopping capability as OneWeb commercialises its global communications broadband services via LEO satellites at the end of 2021.  The beam hopping capability also enables seamless handover for mobile devices, between beams and satellites. An example would be an Aero terminal for In-Flight Connectivity, able to operate on both LEO and GEO simultaneously and maintaining make-before-break connectivity between the rising and setting satellites. Maximum capacity can be directed from multiple sources to hot-spots like busy airports. 

SatixFy has also developed the first modem to fully support the entire DVB-S2X standard including all beam hopping modes over LEO, MEO and GEO systems. 

“The Sx3099 chip is first of its kind supporting LEO/GEO orbits with multiple modems capable of very high throughput,” stated Yoel Gat, SatixFy Space System CEO. “It has provisions for both fixed and mobile applications and can serve as a baseline for future broadband satellite communication applications.” 

Gilat Telecom is now offering the Intelsat FlexMove managed service for land mobile connectivity. It enables customers to connect to the internet, private data networks and cloud services from virtually anywhere in the world, including while on-the-move, or on-the-pause at a temporary site. 

“With the Intelsat FlexMove service, we can help our customers quickly and easily deploy mission-critical communications and maintain a seamless connection to the people and applications they rely on,” says Gilat Telecom VP, Ami Schneider. 

The “always-on” FlexMove connectivity solution is claimed to be up to 20 times faster than current mobile satellite solutions for a fraction of the cost. It offers global, multi-layered, redundant coverage that enables even the most data-intensive applications. 

The company is offering FlexMove service plans by the gigabyte. These plans are integrated with a portfolio of satellite terminals empowering even non-technical personnel to set-up and connect to the internet in minutes. Service plans are designed for recurring, seasonal, occasional and, event-based use. Users can pool airtime and share data costs across multiple terminals, making FlexMove a cost-effective connectivity solution for organizations with large vehicle fleets and numerous remote locations. 

Additionally, Gilat’s VSAT services are now available in every country in Africa offering “significant advantages” over other domestic and international connectivity providers. 

A new self-control portal, developed specifically for the African market, gives organisations control over their networks and full visibility of all their services including billing (e-banking), OSS and BSS visible on the same dashboard.  It offers downlinks of 70Mbps with up to 15Mbps uplink per single terminal. 

The use of multiple HTS and regular satellites enables Gilat Telecom to tailor its service to meet the customer demands. Providers include AfricaSat, ABS, Intelsat, Belintersat, Chinasat, Spacecom, SES and more. In addition, Gilat uses equipment and services from vendors including Newtec, iDirect, Novelsat, UHP and Comtech. 

Thuraya, the mobile satellite services subsidiary of UAE’s Al Yah Satellite Communications Company (Yahsat), is building Thuraya 4-NGS, a next generation mobile telecommunications system with Airbus.  

This is a major milestone in Yahsat’s commitment towards transforming Thuraya which it acquired in 2018. The next-gen system entails a complete overhaul of its space and ground platforms, enabling a new set of services across a greater coverage area. The new capabilities are aimed at offering the highest speeds available in the market, while reinforcing Thuraya’s strengths in the MSS voice market.  

This brings Yahsat’s total committed investment in Thuraya to north of US$500 million. More is anticipated to come, including an option with Airbus to build Thuraya 5-NGS (an additional satellite identical to Thuraya 4-NGS), strengthening its coverage and capabilities across the Asia Pacific region. Thuraya 4-NGS will incorporate a large 12-metre L-band antenna and a payload with on-board processing.  It is scheduled for operation in 2024 

Thuraya also signed with Ericsson for a core network modernisation and upgrade to its 4G and 5G ready infrastructure.  This would also guarantee more flexible, reliable and effective services.   

AvL Technologies’ latest antenna and terminals include the ultra-lightweight 2.4m axi-symmetric antenna for operation in X, Ku and Ka-band with new bayonet-style feeds and quick-change RF kits. A C-band capability is in the planning as an upgrade kit. The antenna has numerous BUC and LNB options, and it supports RF or modem peaking.
The new 1.35m Flexible Integrated Terminal (FIT) is a user-defined platform with a 12-petal reflector and an integral tripod for a small pack-up in two IATA-compliant checkable cases. The manual-point version of this antenna can be operated manually or upgraded to motorized operation with auto-acquisition. The terminals operate in X, Ku and Ka-band with new bayonet-style feeds and feed kits for quick RF changes. 
AvL’s new ruggedized 1.30m FIT platform has a high-stiffness 6-petal reflector and reinforced tripod. The terminal operates manually or with auto-acquire in X, Ku or Ka-band, and is designed to operate in strong winds without additional wind stiffening. It offers a new bayonet-style feed mount, quick-change RF kits, an optional terminal control module with a spectrum display, BUC and LNB options, and RF or modem peaking. 

DataPath has a quarter of a century experience in integrated communications and information technology with an installed base in excess of 4,500 satellite terminals deployed worldwide  

In addition, more than one million end-point devices are managed by its MaxView network monitor and control software. MaxView is ideally suited to monitor and manage all equipment, elements and service applications common in most Network Operation Centres. By providing a centralised view and control of an entire network, MaxView helps operators to improve operational efficiency and incident response time. MaxView Enterprise, the latest release of the software, offers enhancements to the user experience and analytics. It employs a high-performance, mobile responsive web platform, to securely manage networks from virtually any web enabled device. 

 

Focusing on emotions for The Elephant Queen

Copywritten for RED

 When filmmakers Victoria Stone and Mark Deeble set out to make The Elephant Queen, their goal was to make a film that would inspire the world to fall in love with elephants. Stone says, “We wanted to reach audiences who were not necessarily engaged by natural history or wildlife by telling an emotional story.”

https://www.red.com/news/the-elephant-queen

Rather than a conventional information-driven wildlife documentary, The Elephant Queen is constructed like a narrative feature with the elephants as the main characters. The style was influenced by elements of The Lion King, Shrek and March of the Penguins. “The film was released initially in cinemas and so we wanted to make the story really immersive and emotionally driven,” Stone explains. “We loved the whole biodiverse environment that elephants inhabit, the way the story is also about all the other animals who live alongside the elephants. It is all interconnected – a circle of life.”

During the writing, the filmmaking duo had to tone down the natural history information that risked drowning out the story. “A lot of our job was paring it back because you can learn so much simply by watching the elephants,” she says. “Then, we needed a delicate narration [by Academy Award nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor] which wasn’t overbearing on facts.”

The couple have been making award-winning wildlife films in Africa for decades. For The Elephant Queen, they spent four years on location in Tsavo East National Park, Kenya, painstakingly gathering footage with their small team, including assistant director Etienne Oliff.

A key early decision was to shoot with just a single RED camera. “It would have saved us a lot of time had we supplemented with small POV cameras, but we felt that we could best achieve a coherent style by acquiring at as high quality as possible,” Deeble says. “I like to be behind the camera and to respond to whatever is happening – remote cameras don’t give you that same intimacy and ability. We knew we needed to futureproof as much as possible and RED was the natural partner in terms of camera to do that. The look of the image is beautiful and I think that shows in the final product.”

The pair shared directing duties, with Deeble also behind the camera. He was typically buried in undergrowth or perched up a tree. “A single camera allows you to get a more intimate shot and a bit more subtlety to every single scene,” Stone explains, “because each shot is slightly different and planned individually rather than recording remotely where you are more reliant on where you place the camera and what happens in front of it.”

They selected a RED EPIC camera, upgrading to a DRAGON as one became available. Lenses included Nikon primes and a Canon 150-600 mm telephoto – a model converted by Century Precision Optics into a true cinema zoom lens. “We take care of the kit to avoid breakdowns as we’re usually so remote we have to rely on ourselves to fix things,” says Stone. “We chose RED because we believed it wouldn’t have problems and it absolutely worked out that way. It proved to be completely reliable in dust, dirt and heat. In four years, we didn’t have a single camera problem.”

The camera’s compact size meant they could put it anywhere, variously rigging it with a large zoom or mounting a tiny prime and fixing it to the wing of a light aircraft. For aerial shots, Deeble and Stone, who both have pilot licenses, built a rig for the RED attached to a plane’s wing struts and ingeniously used a coffee tin lid as a lens protector which they could open and close from the cockpit.

“On the ground, if we needed to put a camera at eye level near a watering hole, we’d dig a trench and sink a huge metal box so the top was ground level with a letter box-style opening for the lens,” notes Stone. “Mark would sit in that for days on end unobserved.”

“From a style viewpoint, we didn’t want to look down on the little creatures,” Deeble adds. “The geese, dung beetles or tortoises had as much character and importance as the elephants. So, we put the audience down on their level, looking through the creature’s point of view when looking up at the elephants.”

With a tiny team of just 10 (including the camp crew), their workflow in the field was just as inventive. Stone recalls, “When a card came back, we copied it onto three drives. Then we’d make proxies and log the footage before it came back to me for assembling. We had a whole little studio in a tent powered by solar and a small generator. Although time consuming, it worked really well.”

They shot entirely in REDCODE RAW to avoid having to make image decisions in the field. “We wanted maximum flexibility when it came to the grade and to master in high dynamic range,” adds Deeble. “We shot 6K when we could and 4K if we needed the frame rate of 120fps.”

From the outset, they knew that natural sound would be an important part of the storytelling, and to record it they had dedicated sound recordists (Norbert Rottcher and Peter Cayless) for the four years spent in the field. In addition, the team recorded banks of audio atmospheres at various seasons and locations for Wounded Buffalo Sound Studio in England to mix into Dolby Atmos.

The film, which celebrates Kenya’s extraordinary wildlife and biodiversity, has been translated into Kiswahili and Maa for public screenings in East Africa and is accompanied by an Outreach program that Deeble, Stone and Oliff hope will inspire a new generation of Kenyan conservation leaders.

Stone says, “We are proud that The Elephant Queen is produced to the highest possible technical standards but it is equally as important that the film makes a positive difference for elephants in Kenya.”

The Elephant Queen was an official selection of the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival and the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. It won the Cinema for Peace Award in Berlin and the UN World Wildlife Day Biodiversity Award and was awarded Best Cinematography at DOC NYC & Nature Vision. It was the first feature picked up and released for streaming on Apple TV+.

The Elephant Queen won four 2020 Jackson Wild Media Awards for Best Feature Film, Best Cinematography, Best Engaging Youth & Family Film, and Best Audioscape.

 

Haven Studios NY Tenants Benefit from Immediate Availability of Broadband

copywritten for Sohonet 

With over 70,000 square feet of flexible rentable space, Haven Studios NY is one of the few, perhaps only, women-owned studio enterprises in the country. Host to successful productions by NBC/Universal Television, Warner Bros. Television, and HBO, among others, the studio continues to innovate with a focus on first-class communications and connectivity for premier productions.

https://www.sohonet.com/2020/11/05/haven-studios-ny/

Owned and operated by Nicole and Gabrielle Zeller, Haven Studios NY is housed in the former manufacturing facility for Zelco Industries, which manufactured award-winning consumer products like the Itty Bitty Book Light.

Located just 20 minutes from Manhattan in Westchester County, the Studios offer 30,000 square feet of soundproofed studio space and over 40,000 square feet of flexible areas for production or production support. Amenities on-site include turnkey production offices, kitchenettes, laundry, dressing rooms, wardrobe storage, production shops, conference rooms, hair and makeup salon (with styling stations), light rigging and secure parking.

To that list Haven Studios now adds Sohonet Exchange which supplies and manages Internet, networking, wireless and voice solutions on behalf of tenants.

“We were asked to bring Sohonet Exchange into the Studio on behalf of a client at the beginning of the year,” says co-owner Nicole Zeller. “Having seen how professional the service is and how it is appreciated by film and TV producers we have decided to retain Sohonet Exchange as our exclusive communications services partner. We believe there is real benefit for all of our tenants if we offer them a complete broadband and internet phone system as soon as they move in. Instead of taking several weeks to get up and running, they can work with a fully functioning, comprehensive connectivity from day one.”

Haven Studios NY opened in 2014 and has hosted dramas including HBO’s The Leftovers starring Justin Theroux and NBCU series The Path and New Amsterdam. HBO’s Scenes from a Marriage will begin shooting there later this year.As a qualified production facility in the state of New York, productions shooting there may qualify for up to a 30% tax credit. Additional tax incentives are available via Haven’s certification as a Women-Owned Business Enterprise.

Haven Studios re-opened at the end of August following Covid-19 enforced lockdown with stringent health and safety measures in place. This includes temperature testing, hand sanitiser stands and social distancing rules.

“It’s a learning curve for us all but we have not had any problems,” reports Zeller. “Haven Studios NY is experienced and equipped to handle all of your production needs and we look forward to helping you make us your home.”

Taking the lead on sustainability now

copywritten for Blackbird 

Even as the world concentrates on living with Covid-19, the more urgent threat to our existence is saving the planet.

https://www.blackbird.video/uncategorized/taking-the-lead-on-sustainability-now/

Microsoft is one of a growing number of organisations to have announced its intent to be carbon negative by 2030. It’s an ambitious plan which the video industry would do well to heed.

According to Bafta’s production sustainability body, Albert, an hour of TV typically generates about 14 tonnes of CO2. That’s just production: it doesn’t include transmission or distribution. To put that into some context, an hour of TV has the same impact as running three homes for one year.

Change is an obligation

The environment is a red-button issue for consumers. Sustainability is fundamental to how organisations in all sectors should operate going forward. For instance, every time data is moved from A to B there is a carbon cost.

To put some statistics on this: Cisco believes global internet video traffic will increase by a third each year through 2022 with live internet video, led by platforms like Twitch and YouTube, growing at an astonishing rate of 73% in that period. Video streaming will constitute 79% of all mobile network traffic by 2022.

All of this has a direct negative environmental impact on manufacturing cost, energy, cooling, content transmission and storage and caching.

Technology can help. Employing a means of reducing the amount of video (data) trafficking across the internet – whilst maintaining the viewing experience – can help eliminate the need for heavy duty bandwidth connections and for bespoke hardware.

Improvement in videoconferencing and telepresence can reduce the carbon-heavy cost of corporate travel. Remote distributed anywhere production is not a nice to have concept but an essential business continuity and environmentally conscious workflow for any content producer.

It’s clear to us that the broadcast industry from international sports federations like Formula 1 to global news organisations like the BBC are taking sustainability seriously. 

An ultra green, sustainable technology built for the new world

For its part, Blackbird is committed to conserving natural resources in all that it does – delivering real, tangible environmental benefits to customers and society.

This is hard-wired into its corporate policy and includes embedding relevant environmental, social and governance matters into its culture and work practices.

Tech-wise, Blackbird’s solution means no new hardware manufacture since the platform works in any browser, eliminating the need to buy bespoke editing hardware, no matter the scale of production demand.

There’s no packaging either. Being software-based means Blackbird is available digitally, eliminating all hardware installation at a stroke. Furthermore, power, storage, compute and transport energy inefficiencies are shrunk from a production’s footprint overnight thanks to the ultra-efficient cloud-based Blackbird codec.

These credentials set the standard for all other video production applications to follow.

We are proud to be recognised for this endeavor by being shortlisted for the Video Tech Innovation Awards 2020 in their Sustainability category.

Long before the current crisis, the prospect of climate catastrophe was posing the media and entertainment industry with a do or die ultimatum. Coronavirus has provided us all with a once in a generation chance to reset the agenda and take forward our collective responsibility to reinvent content and broadcast with environmental goals front and centre.

Using the Arri ALEXA 65 to adapt a classic

RedShark

A literary classic of gothic romance adapted by Alfred Hitchcock in celebrated Best Picture Oscar form is not necessarily a remake you would associate with the director of Kill List – but Ben Wheatley is not one for being pigeonholed.

https://www.redsharknews.com/using-the-arri-alexa-65-to-remake-a-classic

With Kill List, Sightseers and A Field in England the British auteur was staking out a startling career in horror and macabre comedy but with his 1970’s set JG Ballard adaptation High Rise, kinetic epic shoot-out Free Fire and kitchen sink drama Happy New Year, Colin Burstead Wheatley has expanded his repertoire.

Rebecca, scripted by Jane Goldman (X-Men: Days of Future Past) is made for Netflix with probably Wheatley’s biggest budget to date. It’s a sumptuous period drama that gives him an opportunity to direct a film that harks back to the days of studio-bound Hollywood glory.

“I think Ben was quite keen on legitimacy,” says Laurie Rose BSC, who has shot all eight of Wheatley’s features. “Ben produces and writes a lot of his own work but I think he took this on because it was working with someone else’s script and to make progress in terms of budget in what he is allowed to do.”

The filmmakers were also attracted to a story that may be less familiar to audiences than they think.

“We’ve all got a sense of the Hitchcock version in our minds but I had to revisit it,” says Rose. “It is astonishing and beautiful but out of date in terms of the writing and the way that it was made in the studio system.”

Wheatley says that what he really loved “was that du Maurier had a scheme, which was to smuggle in something quite sinister inside the wrapping of something that looks like a romantic story. You’re lulled into that false sense of security before it’s pulled away from you.”

They had to steer away from emulating Hitchcock’s 1940 version starring Laurence Olivier so as not to infringe copywrite. “Our version is far more faithful to the darkness of the book,” he says. “In our Rebecca, there’s a modern element to the gaslighting story (deliberately causing someone to doubt their sanity) wrapped in a tale of posh people with servants and big houses - and it goes wrong.”

Rebecca actually immerses the viewer in a Russian doll of genres. What begins as a sweeping romance in sun-kissed Monte Carlo moves into darker psychological territory after the newlyweds, Maxim de Winter (Armie Hammer) and his second wife (Lily James) arrive at Manderley — his imposing estate (and the object of one literature’s most famous opening lines) — where the young woman finds herself battling the haunting legacy of Maxim’s first wife, Rebecca, not to mention Mrs. Danvers (Kristin Scott Thomas), the sinister housekeeper bent on keeping her former mistress’s memory alive.

Rose’s approach was to capture the Hollywood studio-bound elegance of the 1940s. He recalls two particular scenes — at polar ends of film — that showcase this in different ways.

“We worked with a really beautiful light in France, so it was a real opportunity to revel in that sunshine,” he says. “The scene on the beach where they’re talking about bottling memories, just showed the intimacy of things. The sun was very low and shallow and using the sun flare was just beautiful. Everything just about hit at the right time.”

His other particular favourite scene was a showdown with the main characters in the library.

“It was a shot that was so indicative of a film from the forties. It was done in long single takes. We were on a dolly, basically running live. So, as they came into the room, we backed up and then we moved in and would move out and across. It was hyper-mobile, almost like a live performance very much like the scenes you might get in a Hollywood film from the ‘40s. We hit these very precise marks that kept the dynamic of the scene up for actors. The dialogue was rapid fire and it was all just beautifully choreographed.”

This more formal style, working with premium production design, is unusual for the Rose and Wheatley who tended to favour (and because of limited budget) a more run and gun handheld approach. Rose seized the chance to shoot with the giant Arri ALEXA 65mm sensor.

“I knew I wanted to shoot Arri 65 digital with full frame DNAs and [producers] Working Title were keen to support it.  Our B-cam was an Alexa LF, partly so we could save a bit on data [if the 65 had been his sole camera].”

The Arri ALEXA 65 shoots 6K and the LF is a 4.5K sensor. Rose shot 5.5K on the 65 to reduce the difference in resolution between the two.

“There was a wide portrait 50mm that I liked - sweet in the centre and softened out super quickly around the edges. Also a red-dot variant 80mm I fell in love with for the indescribable way it fell off and the way it flared. I wore it at every opportunity. You end up with a real voice in the lenses.” 

He doesn’t like to bake in a hard look, preferring to remain true to the costumes, landscapes and interiors and exteriors of the heritage house locations.

“I don’t tend to lay over anything unauthentic. I always monitor with a very, very light touch rec.709 because I know I can shoot within that colour space know I can add a lot in post if needed. It means my neg is safe and I know I can hold my highlights and there’s plenty in the shadows.”

‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again’ is one of the most evocative lines in literature. If ever there was location as character it is this. But with so many of England’s most famous estates having been featured in numerous productions over the years, the task of making Manderley seem new and never-before-seen was tricky. Production Designer Sarah Greenwood designed a composite of eight different country houses and estates, including Cranborne Manor (Wiltshire), Hatfield House (Hertfordshire), Mapperton House (Dorset), and Osterley House (Isleworth).

“Manderley had to be mysterious behemoth of a house that no-one could begin to make sense of,” says Rose. “It made it a little difficult to track shots because we had to Frankenstein someone’s movements. The actor walks about out of a room in one place and into a room in a different location but nobody will have the blindest idea.”

Rebecca’s own boudoir is a “fantastical, fantasy space” with higher ceilings, more gothic the rest of the house, decorated with art deco, dark wood and silver and tarnished mirrors. “It’s dreamy and ethereal,” he says.

Wheatley’s upcoming projects include Tomb Raider 2 with Alicia Vikander.

Bringing back the crowds

Broadcast

When elite sports resumed without spectators, broadcasters and major leagues weighed the value of adding back artificial crowds. While US sports have gone full Disney with animated packed houses, Europe’s broadcasters have been more conservative in blurring the boundary between fact and fake. Now we know that fans could be excluded for the entire 2020-21 season, the goal is to increase the community feel and connection between clubs and broadcasters on the one side with their fanbase and particularly paying subscribers. 

p31 Winter issue https://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/html5/reader/production/default.aspx?pubname=&edid=16d6fab9-b66c-473a-b459-75179ed12a2a

Virtual fan experiments have gravitated from rudimentary cardboard cut outs in the stands to pitch side LEDs displaying thousands of fans on Zoom link, pioneered by a Danish league match in May.  

The concept has become more sophisticated. The NBA and NFL, for example, are using Microsoft Teams to live stream fans using webcams and smartphones onto giant video boards at the venue. The NBA settled on a bank of 320 virtual spectators on 17-foot video boards located behind the teams’ benches and at the ends of the court, as being the best visual experience – neither too big nor too small. 

Fans are also encouraged to ‘cheer’ by clicking on a logo of their team on the NBA app, an action represented by graphics on screens at the sport’s Covid biosphere in Orlando – incidentally part of the Disney World resort. 

Since the NFL’s return in September select games are being accompanied by a Fan Mosaic of 30 home club fans displayed on stadiums screens and broadcast. These fans see a dual-screen display of the live game next to a gallery view of fellow fans. Each fan video feed is isolated and mixed into the Fan Mosaic display.  

The WWE has gone further. Up to a thousand virtual fans are dropped into a giant matrix and displayed on screens that forms the entire backdrop to the wrestling bout.  

“Perhaps more than any other sport, wrestling depends on that back and forth interaction with the audience. Without that you miss out on the whole dynamic,” says Tom Shelburne, Director of Sales & Business Development, Pixotope - part of The Future Group, whose technology processes and synchronizes the individual video-conferenced feeds. 

Beginning in July, Fox Sports’ MLB broadcasts have carpeted stadia like Wrigley Fields in CG crowds. The technology unites camera tracking technology from Sports Media Technologies (SMT), virtual graphics designed by Silver Spoon and realtime graphics processing from Pixotope based on Unreal Engine 3D. The result allows thousands of fans to be dynamically created, controlled and synched with the live pictures with between 2 and 8 frames delay. 

“Fox acknowledge this is not real but what they’re doing is giving the viewer a much better experience,” says Shelburne. “We can add 42,000 unique individuals. We can change the colour of their clothing, make them sit, stand, jump, cheer, do high fives or wave. We can alter the density of the audience. Even the shadow of the sun during the live game is taken into account to light the CG crowd.” 

Reaction has been mixed. Much of the response on Twitter is consistent with this from @RomeVanLara2: ‘This is so stupid. Same with fake noise. Are we incapable of dealing with reality of empty stadiums?’ 

Others are more appreciate of the effort. “If Fox Sports didn’t see a positive outcome to it they would have stopped after the first couple of games,” says Shelburne. “Instead, they carried it over to the NFL [Fox is adding the same tech to its NFL broadcasts] and into their entertainment division as well. So, they are seeing a real value to this. 

“We’ve seen our competitors try to deliver this virtual fan experience and it comes across like Wii characters. Anyone can deliver a virtual experience but not everyone can make it photoreal. If you move the camera around the field and the crowd is misaligned even slightly, the illusion falls apart.” 

Fox is also hoping the augmented reality can open new in-game advertising opportunities. “We’ve not gone live yet, but we have tested how sports can make a return on investment,” says Shelburne, who admits that the technology is expensive. “For example, we can make everyone wear a red jersey and white hat in Coke branding or have them flip a card over to spell out a branded message. We could have a Coke bottle virtually pop out of a jumbrotron and have soda flowing over the stadium.”  

Elsewhere, NFL sponsor Budlight has created a special Showtime cam which puts the spotlight on fans from the Fan Mosaic and fan tweets on LED screens installed at each end zone after a touchdown. 

Similar intimate relationships between the game and its advertisers (especially alcohol) are still kept at arms’ length in Europe and is one reason why cricket, football and rugby remain shorn of the CG razamatazz – for now. 

“The UK market is quite entrenched in what it’s used to seeing and doesn’t respond well to what they perceive as more gimmicky simulations,” says Nick Moody, Executive Producer, Sunset+Vine. “US sports tend to be a lot more driven by data and graphics and therefore busier on screen. Audiences there are more willing to accept virtual fans into their production than we are culturally in the UK. It’s expensive to do it well and I’m not sure it really gives us much of an enhanced experience.” 

Before ‘Project Restart’ the Premier League were presented with a number of options by the broadcasters to shake up presentation. These included micing up the referees (as in rugby union), 360-degree replays, subs being interviewed during match play and a new tactical camera feed.  

“Not many came to fruition for various reasons,” says Moody. “We’ve managed to get an extra camera in the tunnel for EPL matches but micing up the captains at coin toss didn’t really give us anything. Nor did having the managers record a short pre-match piece to iPhone on the coach journey. Ultimately, as is evident by the regular positive virus tests among EPL players and staff, it’s about keeping everyone safe. Adding too much infrastructure risks undermining that.” 

That’s also the reason why BT Sport’s trailed introduction of a flagship 8K live service on its Ultimate tier has been delayed. “We are confident we can do it,” says Jamie Hindhaugh, Chief Operating Officer. “There will be more 8K event coming soon.” 

The broadcaster’s creative response to Covid included installing ‘Fan Parks’ as part of its behind-closed-doors live matchday presentation. Feeds of thirty-two fans (16 per club) are displayed in its studio for presenters and pundits to interact with live. Another initiative, Watch Together, allows fans to watch, see and chat with friends in a split screen view during the match via the BT Sport app (similarly, Sky Sports offers Fanzone). It has also taken audio stems of manager and player chat from the live feed to build into highlights reels. 

“I think our audiences tend to expect more authentic and natural environments,” says Hindhaugh.  

Faced with scepticism in some quarters, audio simulation has proved the most enduring success. “It’s counter intuitive but there’s no doubt the game looks better with enhanced audio,” says Moody. “The production team have a set of effects (sourced from EA Sport’s FIFA video game) for events like a near miss or goal and another set of archive audio atmosphere’s specific to each ground, each team and even historic games between each club. These effects are mixed live.” 

Given the choice of enhanced audio or ‘purist’ sound, 70-80% of BT Sport viewers are choosing the former. “I was wary about enhanced sound but it’s been a clear success,” says Hindhaugh. “When you’re watching at home you tend not to always focus on the TV. That sound helps signpost when to look up. 

“We are always looking for ways to bring fans closer to the game and be part of the conversation. The longer fans aren’t allowed back to grounds, the more important it is for us to give them options to enjoy as rich a connection as possible.” 

Behind the Scenes: The Trial of the Chicago 7

IBC

Phedon Papamichael ASC unlocks the visual puzzle of Aaron Sorkin’s politically charged legal drama.

https://www.ibc.org/trends/behind-the-scenes-the-trial-of-the-chicago-7/6943.article

It’s 1968 and the United States is in turmoil. Martin Luther King Jr. is gunned down by an assassin in Memphis, Robert F. Kennedy is shot and killed in LA. The Vietnam War is at its height, with over 30,000 American casualties and 1,000 more US troops killed each month. In August, scores of antiwar protestors gather outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and are tear-gassed and beaten by police and the National Guard. 

The following year, eight antiwar activists are put on trial for conspiring to incite a riot facing charges brought by a new Republican administration aiming to stifle and silence the movement. 

Sounds familiar? “The script didn’t change to mirror the times, the times changed to mirror the script,” says Aaron Sorkin in the production notes for The Trial of the Chicago 7 which he originally wrote in 2007, intending it for Steven Spielberg. “Just as Fred Hampton (leader of the Black Panthers in 1968) was killed by the police in the middle of the trial, George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Breonna Taylor, and countless others are similarly tragically killed [today]. Suddenly protestors are met with tear gas, riot clubs.” 

Sorkin has said that until Spielberg brought his attention to it he was unaware of the Chicago 7, but the volatile cocktail of injustice, protest and repression couldn’t be more timely. Netflix has intentionally brought forward release ahead of the US election. 

The West Wing creator has lassoed a heavyweight cast including a trio of Brits in Eddie Redmayne, Sasha Baron Cohen and Mark Rylance with Jeremy Strong, Watchmen star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plus Michael Keaton. 

Phedon Papamichael ASC, Academy Award-nominated for Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, is the film’s cinematographer. He says the biggest challenge was working with a script that was intricately structured and dense in dialogue but visually imprecise. 

“Aaron’s writing is very nonlinear,” Papamichael tells IBC365. “Not just jumping forward or back in time but constantly criss-crossing these timelines. We’d sometimes just record one line and then move to another line that won’t necessarily be one that progressively follows from it.” 

The actual trial took place over six months (starting September 1969) and involved 200 witnesses. In telling what is essentially a legal drama, the trick was to find ways of making the story cinematic. 

“We’re creating this visual puzzle and filming little impressions and vignettes to support certain lines and moments and beats of the trial in order to help break it up visually so you don’t feel like you’re stuck in a courtroom.”  

Sorkin had structured the courtroom scenes and the flashbacks very specifically, with most of the intercuts written in. Nonetheless, tracking this on the page proved tricky when it came to the logistics of filming. It fell to Papamichael to create and organise the coverage – the reaction shots and atmospheres which are needed editorially to tell the story. 

“With Aaron it’s all about the word and the structure of this overlapping puzzle that he sees in his head,” says Papamichael. “He is not a visual director like James Mangold or David Fincher. He relies heavily on the cinematographer and designer to take care of all that.” 

He continues, “If he saw the actor speaking the line on camera he was good with that take. But I know we need reactions of the jury and of the prosecutor to build the scene. He doesn’t even look at the screen of the monitor on set. He literally closes his eyes and just listens to it. For Aaron, it’s all about the rhythm. He knows exactly what he wants, you show him that and often he’ll think he doesn’t need anything else – which is may be true most of the time – but you have to find a way to shoot so it’s not just two hours of talking heads in a courtroom.” 

Since the script didn’t spell out the chronology of the trial, Papamichael worked with the script supervisor to strip the flashbacks and jumps forward into a calendar in order to schedule the shoot.  

“Since the trial takes place over such a long period I wanted to convey that passage of time. So on the opening day of the trial I play it sunny, and as we go through the winter months I play it moodier. I had to assign different moods and assign specific grammar for specific witnesses. So certain scenes would be better if it were raining, others if it were overcast.” 

Lacking the budget for a huge crowd of extras on call (the film cost $35 million, which is moderate for a film of this scale) Papamichael first shot the courtroom scenes from one direction and then reshot them from a different angle when they had the extras to fill the room.  

The courtroom scenes are more composed and static in contrast to scenes set outside the court which are shot handheld and are energised by documentary footage of the riots. 

“Recreating the protests at the actual locations in Chicago enables us to create a structure that gets the movie away from being a traditional courtroom drama,” Papamichael explains. “Since we are also limited in terms of extras in the crowd [there were around 10,000 people on the streets of Chicago in 1968 and the film had 175 on set] the best way to handle that was to merge our cameras into the scene like an actual documentary crew and not create big objective wide shots.” 

Papamichael filmed with the same camera and lens package he used to acclaim on sixties-set drama Ford v Ferrari (aka Le Mans 66). This was an ARRI Alexa LF and Mini LF combined with Panavision anamorphics specially configured to fit the large format sensor. 

“Because all the characters have their own agendas, I wanted to be able to connect them and get everyone’s reaction. The large format really lent itself in the 2.40:1 aspect ratio to covering these multiple characters [defendants and lawyers] sitting in a row in the court room.”  

The film is intercut by editor Alan Baumgarten, ACE (editor of Sorkin-directed Molly’s Game), with archive of the events culled from televised coverage, amateur Super 8 and police film of the riots. 

Some of the footage was taken from Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool, a cinema verité-style drama that takes place in Chicago in the summer of 1968 and combines fictional and non-fictional content. The film served as one of Papamichael’s inspirations during the shoot.

“The footage that we generated in our recreation of the riots is more kinetic and documentary-like, but we’re not intentionally making our characters part of a documentary,” Papamichael says. “This is still a movie. 

“In the film, we show a 4-second vignette, then you are back in the courtroom and a guy says two lines, then you move to documentary found footage and then you go to another timeline. The pacing of Aaron’s storytelling really lends itself to be able to throw all these pieces together. It’s not like we have a 20-minute sequence of the riots.”  

The large ensemble cast assembled for Chicago 7 proved a handful. Papamichael contrasts the experience to working with director James Mangold.   

“We don’t like to preconceive too much… we look at what is happening in the moment. So, with Joaquin Phoenix on Walk The Line we never really knew what we were going to do – the inspiration comes from the performance. 

“Every director is different,” he adds. “In Chicago 7, I ended up in charge of blocking the movie and assigning who gets what shots because Aaron didn’t really want to talk to them about that. So, it’s like ‘don’t I get a close up?’ and ‘isn’t this scene about me?’ – and I was very much caught in the middle. Which is fun… I love working with actors, but there’s lots of strong individual personalities on this one.” 

He elaborates; “Some actors preferred to improvise. Mark Rylance is a theatre director and actor with a very different approach – he’s very focussed. Jeremy is a super-method actor and Sasha is just goofing around between takes. So, bringing that crazy group together was hard. Having to capture it all and make it work for Aaron and for the actors not be super frustrated… that was the particular challenge on this movie.” 

The Netflix effect 
The film began life at Paramount intended for theatrical release. When Covid struck and cinemas closed, the studio off-loaded it to Netflix which ramped forward its release. 

“I haven’t shot for TV in 30 years and under different circumstances I’d be disappointed this was on Netflix. I shoot for the big screen and I want people to experience it in theatres,” says Papamichael. “But probably more people will view it this way on Netflix. 

“There was definitely a great urgency to get it out before the election. It’s an advantage to our film in one way that everything that’s going on [in the US] makes it relevant, but it’s also so tragic.”