For the 3rd consecutive year, Broadcast Management Group was contracted to provide live production support for “IMDb Live After the Emmys” – a 60-minute post-show immediately following the 71st Emmy Awards in Los Angeles. This year’s production streamed live to Twitch, Twitter, Amazon Prime Video, IMDb.com and Alexa-connected devices. With the live show now behind us, we’re taking a breather and putting together a behind-the-scenes recap of our latest award show production for IMDb. Here’s a closer look at our production footprint and the technology used to execute “IMDb Live After the Emmys.”
Truck Farm
The truck farm, located directly in front of the LA Convention Center, is where our video village was located for this year’s live production. We brought in a 53’ expando production truck, which housed our technical team. We also housed a 53’ expando support trailer, which housed IMDb’s editing and producing staff. Both trucks were networked together – comms stations were setup in the post trailer so editors had a direct line to our technical team and multiple monitors were setup so IMDb staff could watch our program return as well as the Emmys telecast.
Broadcast Management Group provided a NAS server that was networked with the EVS in the production truck and 7 IMDb edit stations. Our EVS operators would clip off red carpet interview segments and key moments from the Emmys telecast and send those clips down the line to the NAS.
IMDb editors would be able to grab those clips off of the NAS and use the content to edit together recaps and sizzle reels. They could also push the completed packages back to the NAS where our EVS ops could grab the content for playback during the live post-show. This is a workflow we’ve commonly used with the IMDb team and perfected over the last several years. The truck farm was also home to our craft service tent and BMG’s sprinter van. It carried supplemental equipment for the production as well as redundant gear.
Winner’s Walk
IMDb’s main set was located at the Winner’s Walk, inside the Gold Ballroom of the JW Marriott in downtown LA. Due to a limited footprint, we covered the Winner’s Walk set using 5 robotic cameras in order to keep a lean profile. We mounted a prompter and program monitor to the host camera. Then we setup two 42” monitors so the host could watch the Emmys broadcast and IMDb program return. The show’s host and co-host were both mic’d with wired lavs and IFBs with wired backups for each. All guests on the program were given wired stick mics. All camera feeds, monitors, comms and mics were sent back to our truck via two TAC-12 fiber lines.
Red Carpet
Prior to the start of the Emmys broadcast, IMDb had a correspondent on the red carpet (actually, it was purple) who was interviewing Emmy nominees on their way into the Microsoft Theatre. Our red-carpet camera, audio and comms were fed back to our truck via fiber. The red-carpet interviews were ISO recorded in EVS and each individual interview was clipped and sent to the IMDb editing team via the NAS workflow. The red-carpet interviews were edited together into a red-carpet sizzle reel. They were played back as a package during the live post-show.
Governor’s Ball
IMDb was granted exclusive access to the Governor’s Ball, the official post-Emmys after-party, which was held on the top level of the LA Live Event Deck. We set up a manned camera position outside the ball, just next to the engraving station, as well as a robotic camera inside the ball. The robotic camera captured general party coverage and bump shots. The manned camera captured award winners getting their Emmys statuettes engraved.
Most clips from the engraving station were taken live. However, several clips were recorded in EVS and played back as “look live” package. All cameras, audio, and comms from the Governor’s Ball was sent back to our production truck via fiber.
If you’re looking for support for an upcoming live production, contact us any time. We’d welcome the opportunity to work together.
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