14 Nov 12 Hours of Non-Stop Streaming of Homer’s Odyssey

The challenge was great: enable four separate ENG camera crews moving throughout London to stream for 12-hours straight as an army of artists read Homer’s The Odyssey.
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To cover the event 3xScreen deployed four crews to film and live stream 12 hours of non stop reading of Homer’s Odyssey for the Almeida Theatre. The standout feature of this production was not (just) the epic scale of the live stream, but the way that the production was approached.

“At home” productions have been gathering popularity in the US where it has been proving a cheaper and more reliable solution compared to traditional workflows. It was the “at home” approach that allowed 3xScreen to fully leverage the capability of our state-of-the-art MCR and bring this brief to life.

Starting and ending at the Almeida Theatre in Islington, the camera crews moved about the city from a variety of iconic London locations, each providing unique broadcast challenges that required custom solutions. A variety of technologies for acquisition and delivery were used to send the four feeds to the 3xScreen MCR where we streamed the content live to the Almeida website. This is where the “At home” part of the production kicks in. By receiving the four feeds at the MCR in this manner, we could thoroughly quality control each feed, make any necessary adjustments to the image such as colour, sound and light levels. We could also add animated graphics, holding images and a range of other production value-adding effects.

Production partner Kinura, along with the Almeida theatre chose 3xS as partner for Odyssey as we’d collaborated over recent years on a number of other projects that required our LiveU/Dejero /MCR production model.

Each crew had an identical set up of an ENG camera reverse-rigged on a shoulder mount, enabling the camera operator to lead the reader along their route. The quality of mobile coverage, even at major city landmarks is regularly poor and inconsistent, posing the greatest challenge to a smooth, quality live feed. Using our tailored bonded mobile uplink solutions and state of the art MCR, we ensured the quality of the feeds and complete redundancy of the live stream for the twelve hour period.