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Hi fellow Blueroomers,

 

 

 

My (amdram) theatre group is hoping to put on a virtual Comic Relief fundraiser in early April.

 

The aim is to do a number of sketches, some with music and also insert some pre-recorded video clips.

 

The total run time is expected to be around two hours. The idea being that any audience can dip in and out as they wish and make donations via go fund me or similar.

 

We’ve used Zoom for read throughs and some rehearsals and realise that sync can be a problem. I also feel that cueing of the next sketch may also be problematic, unless we use some sort of virtual DSM.

 

Any thoughts on how best to achieve their aims would be most welcome (Both the technology to be used and also the stage management aspects).

 

 

Thanks

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Same rules as live TV shows - if it doesn't /have/ to be live then pre-record it and mix into the live broadcast.

 

So have a host or maybe solo performer(s) who actually are performing live on the night and reacting to messages/donations etc but pre-record as many of the multi person sketches as you can and edit to correct for lag then play them out as though they were live. If major broadcasters with billion dollar satellite communication systems and literal rooms full of technicians can't accurately correct to lag on live site-to-site communications then an am-dram group shouldn't even try.

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We're in the middle of a run of zoom theatre. The latency isn't awful, and as Tom says it's not worth trying to correct it. We're cueing via an external text chat, though that could easily be a voice chat if it needed to be, most of our cueing is standbys with the operator finding the cue point. Cues are never going to be tight on zoom so design them such that they don't have to be. It's best if one person does audio and video from the same zoom account, keeps sync a bit tighter.

 

In terms of playing pre-records back we found the video quality to be better on the camera feed than the screen share (much better frame rate), and the audio to be better via audio share than mic. So our video cues went out of QLab on syphon, into NDI-Syphon, out as an NDI feed into NDI Virtual Input then into Zoom on the camera feed. Audio went out from QLab using the ZoomAudioDevice and audio-only sharing.

 

 

Unless you need audience interactivity my preference is to use zoom (or a-n-other web conference tool) for the cast then live stream the result on youtube/vimeo - you get a more predictable result for the viewer and a bit more control on audio etc. and you get away from spending loads with zoom for extra room capacity. For various reasons we didn't do that for our current run of shows and produced entirely within zoom.

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Think about how these sort of shows are done on TV...

 

Prerecord as much as possible, especially any sketches with people contributing from multiple locations. Prerecording will allow you to correct sync issues or do retakes until you are happy.

 

Maybe have a live host, but keep all the content prerecorded.

 

You can then transmit it on multiple platforms, Zoom/Youtube/Facebook or whatever

 

You need someone to produce/call the show

A tech handling playback

Possibly additional techs handling the host's feed/camera/audio

If you can't get all these people into one (socially distances) room, then you need GOOD communication between all the parties.

 

I've worked on a few corporate virtual conferences, most use Infinifty comms to communicate. https://www.unityintercom.com/

Basically using your own devices as intercoms just like talkback in a theatre.

This can be quite an expensive full featured system, but there is a 7 day free trial..

There are rental and cloud options, which are cheaper but not as fully featured as running your own server.

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Thanks very much all for pointing us in the right direction.

 

We’re now doing our best to get as much content pre-recorded as possible with a host (or three) providing suitable links.

 

Still not sure which platform to present it on though. But hopefully that’s a minor problem?

 

Keep safe

 

Peter

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Might be worth having a look at

, which is sort of similar to your plan. This was all pre-recorded excerpts, with 4 live hosts all in the same room. Produced on OBS.

 

 

I was involved as a remote contributor, so can't answer many questions about their setup but know more or less what they had setup.

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Worth pointing out this isn't some sort of amatuer cheat, it's done in live broadcast all the time. Any complicated sequence that can be pre-recorded will be. The news at ten on BBC is pre-recorded every night through to the end of the titles. Loads of live sports will have opening sequences recorded just before on-air. If you think back to Saturday night lottery gameshows, almost all of them were recorded months in advance, even though the actual draw was live, with the same presenter in the same clothes or references between the live and recorded parts.

 

Basically, don't think of it as a cop-out, think of it as a tool for making a better show for your audience, which is what everyone really wants.

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Worth pointing out this isn't some sort of amatuer cheat, it's done in live broadcast all the time. Any complicated sequence that can be pre-recorded will be. The news at ten on BBC is pre-recorded every night through to the end of the titles. Loads of live sports will have opening sequences recorded just before on-air. If you think back to Saturday night lottery gameshows, almost all of them were recorded months in advance, even though the actual draw was live, with the same presenter in the same clothes or references between the live and recorded parts.

 

Basically, don't think of it as a cop-out, think of it as a tool for making a better show for your audience, which is what everyone really wants.

 

As an example of this, there's Talking Telephone Numbers that went wrong when VT wound the tape whilst on air. This youtube link shows what was actually broadcast, and then the same thing with gallery talkback. The perils of 'live' TV!

 

Edited by pscandrett
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Worth pointing out this isn't some sort of amatuer cheat, it's done in live broadcast all the time. Any complicated sequence that can be pre-recorded will be. The news at ten on BBC is pre-recorded every night through to the end of the titles. Loads of live sports will have opening sequences recorded just before on-air. If you think back to Saturday night lottery gameshows, almost all of them were recorded months in advance, even though the actual draw was live, with the same presenter in the same clothes or references between the live and recorded parts.

 

Basically, don't think of it as a cop-out, think of it as a tool for making a better show for your audience, which is what everyone really wants.

 

As an example of this, there's Talking Telephone Numbers that went wrong when VT wound the tape whilst on air. This youtube link shows what was actually broadcast, and then the same thing with gallery talkback. The perils of 'live' TV!

 

 

My goodness..I'm feeling stressed just listening to that gallery chatter, especially during the song! Is all live TV like that?

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My goodness..I'm feeling stressed just listening to that gallery chatter, especially during the song! Is all live TV like that?

 

You've got to remember they'll have rehearsed that quite a few times with the production assistant counting and calling the cameras. So they will all know which particular numbers to listen out for. I always find it surprising with "Live" TV how much rehearsal they do - I've done quite a lot of local Children in Need broadcasts which are chaos at the best of times, but even though the broadcast slots only last a couple of minutes, they will rehearse it 3 or 4 times beforehand.

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Worth pointing out this isn't some sort of amatuer cheat, it's done in live broadcast all the time. Any complicated sequence that can be pre-recorded will be. The news at ten on BBC is pre-recorded every night through to the end of the titles. Loads of live sports will have opening sequences recorded just before on-air. If you think back to Saturday night lottery gameshows, almost all of them were recorded months in advance, even though the actual draw was live, with the same presenter in the same clothes or references between the live and recorded parts.

 

Basically, don't think of it as a cop-out, think of it as a tool for making a better show for your audience, which is what everyone really wants.

 

As an example of this, there's Talking Telephone Numbers that went wrong when VT wound the tape whilst on air. This youtube link shows what was actually broadcast, and then the same thing with gallery talkback. The perils of 'live' TV!

 

 

My goodness..I'm feeling stressed just listening to that gallery chatter, especially during the song! Is all live TV like that?

 

If that makes you nervous check out this

when the studios oddly decided to do 90% of the live broadcast actually live (they only used prerecords when geography meant actors couldn't get to locations fast enough) but any time you see music performance on TV there's someone calling it like this.... and as I mentioned before if there's anything you don't /have/ to do live on air then you dont; huge great chunks of the "live" BGT & x-factor shows are pre-recorded that afternoon.

Many years ago when I worked on kids Saturday morning TV show all the sketches and skits were recorded on Friday afternoon's rehearsal and on Saturday whilst cartoons were being played the hosts changed costumes and filmed interviews with celebs who happened to be in town that day, to play out in episodes broadcast weeks later as "live in studio guests", likewise pop groups would come in to record weeks before their broadcast date and sometimes film their next 2 singles just so they wouldn't have to return to the show that year. On more than one occasion I've been back in my hotel room having finished work and yet be able to watch the end of the show "live" on tv.

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....Talking Telephone Numbers that went wrong when VT wound the tape whilst on air..... The perils of 'live' TV!

VT stopping (2") or spooling (1") on air wasn't uncommon - I recall most of an episode of the short-lived drama series "Triangle" spooling back live on air (in that case a mixture of inexperience & carelessness). I never saw TTN, but it looks quite complex to do "live" (most LE shows of the period were pre-recorded at least 50% over-length, & then heavily edited down to time).

 

Interesting comparison of talkback with Tom's "Grease" clip. TTN sounds fairly standard for over here - PA basically doing the DSM job, calling shot numbers next camera / VT & bar-counting any music, Director cueing everything & everybody, & probably a Producer on switched talkback to the "talent". "Grease" was something else - Director calling everything, with cameras, vision mixer, etc. just taking shot-numbers for their cues.

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The last 'live' OB I worked on was BBC Young Musician. The final was broadcast an hour or so after recording started, but the event was longer than that, so it was a hybrid between live and prerecord - they have an edit suite that looks like most editors but with a big red bar moving from left to right, once something is in the red zone it is committed to going out live.
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My goodness..I'm feeling stressed just listening to that gallery chatter, especially during the song! Is all live TV like that?

 

It's not entirely unlike my recollection of The Results show I used to be involved with on Saturday afternoons for ITV sport. That was live, and we had results coming in all the time, stuff being fed to the presenter as well as the gallery talkback, inserts being counted down and rearranged all the time. Pretty hectic 15 minutes.

 

I'm sure Gary will have similar stories from the Olympics etc.

 

 

 

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