World Rally Championship to return in a flurry of dust, dirt and remote production plans WRC adding more interactivity for fans through WRC All Live with AR By Heather McLean, Editor Thursday, August 6, 2020 - 10:45
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Whoosh!
World Rally Championship (WRC) is back on track with five rallies being held this year, starting with Rally Estonia in September. These post-lockdown rallies bring with them WRC Promotor's plans for moving to a full remote production for live output, which were put on hold in March as the pandemic took hold globally.
In May 2019 WRC Promoter bought all its post production to London, and this year it had been planning an even bigger push towards remote production for each rally. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, that plan was to have all galleries for both live and post production based in London, with NEP at Stockley Park, from the third quarter 2020.
This would have happened after latency testing this summer at the scheduled rallies in Finland, Mexico which was the last rally held before the UK lockdown and Argentina, and finally a full remote rally test in New Zealand, which was scheduled for 3-6 September but was cancelled in early June as the country's borders remained shut.
As WRC returns post-lockdown with Rally Estonia (4-6 September), those plans have been pushed along also, with testing for its fully remote production for live output to run alongside the new schedule of rallies.
Commented WRC director of content and production, Florian Ruth: Everything [for our live remote production tests] got postponed, unfortunately. Technically it would have been possible [during lockdown], but for me it was too risky. I was missing a few latency tests that I wanted to do.
So our testing starts now for the next races, especially our latency and visibility tests. For the rest of the year we will be doing testing, then we go completely live remote for January 2021 at Rally Monte Carlo, our new season opening.
Is it a bird, is it a plane? No, it's a rally car
Moving forward with Rally Estonia
Estonia will be produced in a similar way to how WRC left the plan in Mexico prior to lockdown, says Ruth. We will still have the live production on site and the post production off-site and more flexible than before. But the operation on site will be very much similar.
Things have been adapted for the health and safety of crew, said Ruth: We have reduced the team and crews and we have different production facilities; last year we launched completely new broadcast pods, which with COVID guidelines and the requirements are not feasible anymore, so we got larger OB vans so we're able to respect social distancing and the guidelines, and work with additional pods for EVS or graphics outside the trucks, even. We don't work with our commentator cabins on site anymore because people were squeezed in together.
No changes have been required post-lockdown for cameras at WRC rallies as those positions at different stages of each race have around 100 metres between each one, so are naturally socially distanced. They are alone in the middle of the forest, so our camera operators during work is not affected, and we need the amount of cameras to cover the action, so this isn't affected, Ruth stated.
From a technology side of things, things are very similar to when we stopped [after WRC Rally Mexico]. The next big major step will be in January 2021 when we start to produce live remotely
What is influenced by COVID health and safety guidelines is those back up positions that would normally be staffed on site. Ruth said: Those additional helpers and additional support; those just were taken out. But that doesn't affect the quality of our production. We're trying to travel with the absolute minimum crew as needed, with no back up positions, no second lines, just the absolute minimum needed, he added.
He continued: On site we follow all the FIA guidelines for those racing events; masks all the time, sanitisers, social distancing, cleaning work areas several times a day, and in general being as protective as possible. Also, we consider the learnings from the Formula 1 races, so we follow those, and have to adapt them to the requirements of the national health authority specifics in every place we go to.
But in general, from a technology side of things, things are very similar to when we stopped [after WRC Rally Mexico]. The next big major step will be in January 2021 when we start to produce live remotely, he stated.
Adding AR to WRC All Live
WRC All Live, the subscription-based OTT service for live footage of each rally and a lot more, already includes fan questions and fan videos, which are permanently integrated into programming. However, WRC is adding more interactivity through WRC All Live for fans, including augmented reality (AR) applications.
WRC launched a completely new OTT digital environment at the beginning of this season on WRC , which so far has only been used for three races in 2020. As it was working so well, it has not been adapted further during lockdown.
However, the team are working on new AR developments for the WRC All Live studio, which moves around with the rallies. Commented Ruth: AR and virtual reality (VR) are apps being used. We are working on new AR elements for our All Live studio. As we have a mobile studio, it will be that [the presenter can] wander around the service park with the possibility to show more AR elements within our studio scenes. It will just be a bit more engaging and a bit more attractive for our viewers; it's just a bit nicer than showing full screen boards and so on.
We've run a few tests already, so that will be used for Rally Estonia, and we will keep developing it. Especially for the interactive part, to include and involve fans in our show; AR is a
