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Video communications in COVID-19

 

Being mobile ready and with remote working contingency plans in place, the transition from being primarily office based to working in lockdown was smooth.

An awareness of the impact of the outbreak in other countries also gave us time to ensure operations and post-production teams and animators could work from home with assets ready, projects versioned and remote archiving protocols in place.

The creative and production teams all quickly adapted to using Zoom, Teams, Skype, and WhatsApp - essentially any and all methods - to enable brainstorms, briefings and pre-productions meetings to take place with successful outcomes.

However, with the implementation of social distancing, there was an immediate need to rethink how we shoot and produce complex live productions from multiple locations.

The Through The I production team tackled this challenge head on, developing ideas and new production methods that simply didn’t exist a matter of months ago. 

As fast as the creative concepts came together, the live production team developed, tested and implemented new technology and production concepts that were ready to be deployed the next day.

The response from the whole team has been incredible and inspiring. As COVID-19 locked down countries around the world, we were actively working with LinkedIn to produce, manage, stream and translate a live global event for LinkedIn.

The result was an incredible interactive experience consisting of footage captured in Singapore, Mumbai, Delhi, Sydney, London, NYC, Washington DC and San Francisco before the coronavirus outbreak, edited in to the event we then shot and produced remotely.

In addition to LinkedIn, at TTI we’re privileged to support some of the world’s biggest companies across live and on-demand video and audio production and the first contact with these clients post lockdown was centred on guidance and reassurance.  Their palpable sighs of relief were quickly followed up with – “so what do we do now?”

We started with the basics, looking at where they had committed budget and their immediate project roadmap with the most seismic impact for our clients in the event space.  Social distancing had essentially wiped out the physical event industry and the challenge to virtualise the events was one we relished.

The team rapidly developed a tool-kit to manage entire live video productions of huge scale remotely, with producer units working behind the scenes pulling multiple camera feeds from virtually any source and location globally, which were then managed and moderated centrally, before reaching the audience.

TTI’s Managing Director Scott Jackson recently outlined the methods for producing remote video content in an article collaboration with LinkedIn: How To Create Compelling Video Content From Home.

Scott outlines the importance of clear and crisp audio as the easiest thing to forget and yet the most important factor in driving audience engagement with remote productions. The expectation from clients currently is not for brilliant cinematography but for clear and professional content produced at speed and delivered in a robust and secure way to their audience.

However the TTI DNA is to innovate and keep pushing the boundaries, so we approach remote live productions as we would a TV show with cued VT’s, animation and GFX to support the narrative; a senior remote production crew, to direct talent and seamlessly curate the program; and audience engagement via managed Live Q&A and sign-posted questions fed to presenters.  The production methods have changed but the focus on making brilliant and engaging programming remains the same.

It’s certainly different asking our clients to act as camera operator, soundie and moving lighting around as we direct them across a video call with clients to set up the shot is definitely something new but a skill I’m sure we’ll be deploying for a long time to come as live and on-demand video communications is here to stay.

 

Through The I are proud sponsors of PRCA's first-ever Virtual International Summit on 20/21 May.