Trials and tribulations: Sunset Vine's Stephen Booth talks Early Kick Off and remote production revolution By Heather McLean, Editor Thursday, May 28, 2020 - 16:54
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Presenter for Early Kick Off, Jake Humphrey, working from his home in Norfolk
Sunset Vine was instrumental in producing BT Sport's Early Kick Off programme with a new format designed exclusively for football fans on lockdown.
The first programme broadcast at 11am on Saturday 28 March was pulled together with Sunset Vine working with Timeline TV and a remit from BT Sport to give viewers their Saturday morning football fix while creating a new remote workflow for crew under lockdown, which has been part of this year's stand out production revolution.
Stephen Booth, Sunset Vine executive producer for the show, has given SVG Europe his view from the inside of that production on the learning curve, challenges and benefits.
Sunset Vine started producing Early Kick Off for BT Sport this season after finishing a year on Premier League Tonight. On how the move to remote production for the programme began as COVID-19 began to spread within the UK, Booth explained: We did a live UEFA Europa League programme on 12 March, and it was while we were on air that news came through that Mikel Arteta had tested positive for COVID-19. We were all set to do Watford v Leicester on Saturday 14 March, and that got postponed along with all the other Premier League games on Friday 13th.
BT Sport immediately set Sunset Vine the task of working out how to give viewers their Saturday morning football fix, while Timeline TV was tasked by the broadcaster to discover how to make these live programmes happen during lockdown.
Booth commented: BT Sport came to use to ask us what can we do to give viewers their Saturday lunchtime football fix. There was a bit of back and forth debating what the best thing was, and we had the Early Kick Off brand, so we thought we'd do something around that.
For the programme due on 21 March, Sunset Vine did a best of' Early Kick Off of the top moments of the season so far using a few recorded links on Carrow Road around Norwich City's football ground with presenter Jake Humphrey, who is based in the county.
Sunset Vine's executive producer on Early Kick Off, Stephen Booth
Moving on, Booth said the next programme occurred after a scramble to get kit out to the production crew and to set up Humphrey in a home studio: For the 28 March we did an as live' Early Kick Off [with the team all working remotely]. Ahead of that week we came up with the format for an hour and a half programme [that would work during lockdown], and at the same time Timeline were working on a remote [working] solution for not only Early Kick Off but all other live programmes on BT Sport.
He added: We compared notes, but Timeline really were at the forefront of working out this remote production workflow. We and a couple of other productions were very much the guinea pigs for putting this into production.
Quick scramble
Instead of operating from the ground of whichever football match Early Kick Off was gearing the fans up for, Sunset Vine had to spread its operation for the live programme across England. Shortly before a complete lockdown was announced by the government, Sunset Vine, Timeline TV and BT Sport scrambled to radically change the way every member of each production team for all the major programmes from the broadcaster operated.
Booth said: There was a fairly frantic week spent getting all the equipment out and also at the same time we were setting up a studio at the home of our presenter, Jake. He was getting some bits and bobs out of his garage and hanging some pictures on the wall, and we put some lighting in there.
At the same time we were sending each of the guests two phones; one for the camera, an iPhone 11; and another phone, a Samsung, which had Unity Intercom for a talkback system installed on it; and they also had laptops so that they could see each other.
We'll miss being on OBs, and we'll miss that way of working, but the genie is out of the bottle now
For the rest of us, the production team, we each got a monitor for the multi feed viewer so we could see the VT and graphics sources and the output, Booth explained. We were sent a laptop which was attached to that, and which had the Unity system installed on it, and we were also sent these small talkback units called stream decks. We set those up at home using our home internet.
He added: The vision mixer had a complete vision mixing desk sent to him, which he installed at home, and he had a Reidel panel for talkback. During the course of this series we used a couple of difference sound supervisors; the first one we used had a sound desk in his garage. The VT editors we used all had editing set ups at home.
Getting the kit out to the crew was one of the most challenging parts of this process, Booth noted. Getting equipment out to everyone was the initial challenge, making sure the presenter had somewhere they could present from, making sure the guests for each programme had equipment, making sure the production team all had equipment.
With Humphrey filmed with the help of a technical producer and a camera operator in case of technical issues for the pre-recorded show on 28 March, the next five were filmed live with Humphrey supported in person by a Sunset Vine technical director that lives close by, the production crew all working from various locations across England, and all guests for every programme doing it themselves'.
The remote locations of the Sunset Vine production crew for Early Kick Off for BT Sport
Sunset Vine's production crew - director, executive producer, vision mixer, PA, EVS operator, and sound and graphics operators - each worked from their respective homes.
