Turbocharged production: World Rally Championship Promotor and NEP Finland take the series into a remote production future By Heather McLean Wednesday, August 2, 2023 - 09:00
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World Rally Championship carried out its first live remote production from Safari Rally Kenya which was held from 22 to 25 June, with over 20 hours live from a remote safari park
After a successful test for a new remote production workflow carried out by FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) Promotor and technical partner, NEP Finland, at the second race of the season Rally Sweden this year, the racing series is off to a flying start on its new production model.
Following the test at Rally Sweden in February, Rally Mexico in March was produced completely live from WRC Promotor's new Production Hub at NEP Finland in Helsinki, overseen by Marko Viitanen, NEP Finland managing director. That was followed by the entire Safari Rally Kenya which was held from 22 to 25 June, with over 20 hours live from a remote safari park, and that was quite tremendous to see, says Florian Ruth, WRC Promotor's senior director for content and communication.
Big production plans
WRC Promotor had, as Ruth says, big plans for our production in 2020, but the pandemic sent things off course. All WRC rallies were bought back into the European region and it is only for this year's season that the races have gone longhaul once again. Because of the distances involved this year, those remote production plans are now being realised with the help of NEP Finland, WRC Promotor's production partner for many years.
I asked Marko, how was it? How did it go? , and he was quiet for one moment then said, perfect . We had envisioned a two-day test but after half a day he said, it's absolutely working, Flo. Our concept is working
Ruth explains what happened in 2020: We had all the plans ready, we were ready to switch [to remote]. In the year 2020, we had a really big calendar with a lot of longhaul events. At this time Marko and I had decided to do the remote production in the UK in London, in Stockley Park, and obviously then COVID hit and our series had a stop three rounds into the season and all our plans changed.
We had more European rallies and it took a while until we expanded globally again. We just had the race in Kenya in the middle of a safari park. We've been to Mexico, we're going to Chile and Japan. We didn't see the absolute need to go remote just because everyone else was; we wanted to go remote when it made sense for the production and for the Championship, to really add a value, and now it does.
NEP now has brand new production facilities in Helsinki which are being overseen by Viitanen. Comments Ruth: They've built the absolutely brilliant, almost dream home for the WRC for remote productions. With this option now, we felt now is the absolute moment to do the switch with a new home in Finland, with those amazing state-of-the-art production facilities that NEP has created there, and with our expanded calendar strategy it was the right moment to do this. And not just to do it, but really to do it in a very sophisticated, very professional and safe way.
Perfect test
On the technical challenges for the trial of the workflow at Rally Sweden, Ruth comments: I was in Sweden on site producing and Marko was in Helsinki producing. And when we updated each other I asked Marko, how was it? How did it go? , and he was quiet for one moment then said, perfect . We had envisioned a two-day test but after half a day he said, it's absolutely working, Flo. Our concept is working . So I think Marko produced a couple of hours more, but technically we were there.
The issue we still had technically was the delay of the audio communication, Ruth continues. So to cue the talents, to cue the commentators, to direct the camera operators and so on, there we still had a bit of a job to do.
Viitanen comments: I think honestly I was a day and a half in the gallery doing a test during Rally Sweden and basically just picture cutting; putting pictures together was no difference. So only difference during Sweden was we had a bit of delays on the comms [becuase of] all different methods of transporting it [back to Finland], but for directors or producers, that is a bit of a mindset [requirement] as well, he notes.
We learned that basically we just need to be synced with all the different sources, Viitanen continues. I mean, we have up to 50 video or audio sources coming from a remote location on RF through the plane, heli-tele, and we have cameras on the ground via satellites, we have LiveU, we have several different ways of transporting, and when they all come with different encoding and decoding, syncing up all of those was maybe the key for success when we went to Mexico.
Every location for WRC is different, from Rally Kenya where the safari park where the racing was based was cabled, but there was no mobile signal whatsoever, to the mountains of Mexico where there was, absolutely no connectivity at all, says Ruth. So that's a bit of a challenge. Wherever we go, it's normally completely greenfield. We need to bring everything.
Adds Ruth: When we did our production in Portugal in May, it was quite a big rally and quite spread out. We had a co-production also with TV channel R dio e Televis o de Portugal (RTP) in Portugal. But the amount of technology we need just to produce such a rally is enormous. In Portugal we had four OB vans, two helicopters, two drones, and 160 people in total. We had 105 camera signals to produce 23.5 hours of live television from Rally Portugal. This is just enormous. And as Marko said, we have the helicopter, we have the onboard cameras, we have crowd cameras, we have LiveU's, we have satellite, we have RF coming in, we have fib
