Motorsport Festival: Goodwood SpeedWeek Races to Life With Aurora Media Worldwide

Motorsport festival: Goodwood SpeedWeek races to life with Aurora Media Worldwide Racing to produce the event in half the time By Heather McLean, Editor

Thursday, November 12, 2020 - 18:23

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Goodwood SpeedWeek recently showcased three days of incredible motorsports action both on and off the track.

This new, one-time-only interactive entertainment experience ran from 16 to 18 October behind closed doors with the aim of replacing the cancelled Goodwood Festival of Speed, which was supposed to take place in July, and the Goodwood Revival, which was supposed to happen in September, for millions of fans at home.

Fans from over 150 countries tuned in to watch the racing, new car debuts, specially commissioned lifestyle and automotive content, and interactive experiences, all produced by Aurora Media Worldwide.

Watching via the SpeedWeek hub and on ITV, viewers were treated to on-track drama, one-off competitions, and demonstrations celebrating motorsport's greatest achievements, including 70 years of Formula 1 and 50 years since Porsche's first Le Mans victory.

Two live streams provided entertainment from Friday through to Sunday, showcasing all the action from the motor circuit as well as Revival fashion moments, the power of design, women in motorsport, a behind-the-scenes preview of the on-event Bonhams' auction, and a look at the future of mobility and technology.

At Goodwood SpeedWeek, 15 live on-board cameras were used to get fans even closer to the action

Racing to plan the operation

The challenge on this project was the short timescale available to plan it, which was condensed to around half the time that would normally have been available in a regular year due to the postponement of the two key events due to the pandemic.

Speaking to SVG Europe, Matt Beal, executive producer at Aurora Media Worldwide, comments: The sheer scale of the live hours per day to be produced for this event, with planning only commencing at the end of May 2020 for the event dates of 15 to 18 October 2020, was a challenge.

Normally we would have circa six to eight months of planning for an event of this scale.

Aurora had 14 vehicles in the OB compound consisting of three main scanner trucks with three galleries, seven edit suites, two uplinks units, plus one for streaming, RF and minicams, and a tracking vehicle.

The main OB provider was CTV Outside Broadcasts. It was supported by Hayfisher on all RF camera's and onboard RF camera's, Aerial Camera Systems (ACS) supplying all the SFX camera's and a hot head on the hoist, Aerios Solutions on the drone, with NEP supporting them on the RF coverage. 3XScreens supplied the streaming facilities. All of these elements were needed for the integration of this complex OB at such short notice, says Beal.

Set up began on Sunday 11 October with the tender's and main rigging facilities. All facilities, OB vehicles and crew were on site by Wednesday for FACS checks.

Says Tamara Drew, Aurora Media Worldwide's event producer for Goodwood SpeedWeek: We had over 230 crew that included nine talent and 14 editors working on daily shift patterns of 7am to 4pm and 4pm to 1am.

Strict measures were taken for COVID-19 health and safety within the OBs, including full PPE, hand gel, and specialist waste facilities provided to crew. All trucks were also fitted with Perspex screens in between the individual positions.

Notes Drew: We had many additional measures in place including each truck or team having their own coloured' bubble, so that when anyone had to cross bubbles there was a QR code to be scanned when entering that area, creating our own unique at event' track and trace, should it have been needed. We also had our own health and safety officer on site supplier, First Option.

Goodwood Speedweek celebrated 70 years of Formula 1

As to how the pandemic affected the production in terms of working remotely, Drew says, Cloudbass Graphics provided one graphics operator who worked remoted offsite and from home . She adds: This was a tried and tested remote system that had been used previously with the same graphics op and producer. They were both happy with how this worked.

Complex camera set up

On the camera set up used, Drew comments: SpeedWeek was put on primarily as a TV event, behind closed doors and with no spectators. Therefore, all the innovations and camera were used to enhance the coverage for the at-home viewers and bring them closer to the action and cars.

Those innovations included live drone footage of the Classic Car Racing on one of the motor racing circuits.

One challenge for the camera set up was cabling on two new race routes, says Drew. The new Rally and Driftkhana routes did pose some challenges [for cabling] so we used a number of additional remote camera's in outlying area's to facilitate this challenge.

An extensive list of cameras was used throughout the event. There were: Track 12 fixed, two RF, one Hoist, one Drone; Gymkhana three fixed, one Scissor Lift, one Jib, Hoist, two RF; South Rally eight fixed, one Scissor Lift, one Jib, one Hoist, three RF; North Rally - six fixed, one Scissor Lift, one Jib, one Hoist, three RF.

Adds Drew: We used a hoist to get a beauty shot of the whole circuit, to give viewers at home a better involvement in the final product.

Further cameras included: Studio One - two Fixed, one Jib; Studio Two - 2 Fixed; Talent RF - x five; On-boards - x 15 live on-board cameras; Tracking vehicle - two radio RF live cameras; Drone - one live racing drone; special FX cameras x 20.

Masks proving to be doubly useful for presenters being smoked out at a starting line for Goodwood Speedweek

Blanket coverage streamed

Aurora produced blanket coverage of Goodwood SpeedWeek with two live daily streams that totalled 54 hours content: S

LINK:	https://www.svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/motorsport-festival-goodwood-...
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