Tyler Kern:

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Living Live with 91��ɫ. I’m your host, Tyler Kern. Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of the show today. We’re diving in and talking about metadata and talking mainly about why it’s so important to the overall production process. And we’re going to be talking to the man who literally wrote the book on metadata. It’s Chris Lennon, the director of standard strategy at Ross video. Chris, welcome to the program. Thanks for joining me.

Chris Lennon:

Hey Tyler, it’s good to be here and glad to be able to talk about one of my favorite subjects here.

Tyler Kern:

Absolutely. Well, we’re thrilled to have you here on the show with us today, Chris, but you know, we’re talking about metadata obviously, and we’re going to talk about the book that you wrote on metadata here in just a moment. But before we get to the book, Chris, and discuss this in more depth, can you just bullet point for us some of the reasons why metadata is so important to the production process?

Chris Lennon:

Metadata is important, period, as far as I’m concerned. And I think as far as everybody’s concerned, but it’s particularly critical from a 91��ɫ perspective. When you’re talking about production, and even live production throws another wrinkle into that, but let’s just talk about production. First of all, you have production is really where everything starts, right? And so if you don’t put things in correctly to begin with, you have the old garbage in garbage out axiom. If you don’t do it right the first time it makes it tougher to fix it later on. So with us being focused on the realm of production, it’s absolutely critical. We get the metadata in there that’s needed and get it correct because literally everything else in the media work chain follows on from where we start here.

Chris Lennon:

So again, if we don’t get it right, it’s a problem. And then it’s even worse if we want to say it’s even more complicated, I guess, since we’re focused not just on production, but on live production. To go back to another old axiom, you can fix it in post. Well, you can’t do that when it’s live. So we don’t even have posts that we can lean on and say, we got it wrong. You can fix the audio, fix the video. You can’t fix the metadata. No. There’s no real opportunities to do that. So it’s absolutely critical that we get this right at the very top of the chain here. And it’s where a lot of the critical metadata comes from, is production. You get all this information from the cameras and the various systems that are involved in production. You’ve got all the information there, so there’s no excuse not to put it in and get it right to begin with.

Tyler Kern:

That’s a great point. And I love that phrase garbage in, garbage out. It reminds me of what my mom used to say when I would watch television as a kid. That’s a joke of course. But it’s something that in this particular case, what are the ramifications of not having the correct metadata at the beginning of this process? What are the results of that?

Chris Lennon:

You know, there are a lot of problems that you create downstream, but just to really simplify it, I think everybody’s all about maximizing efficiency and minimizing costs, and you do a lot of that by way of automation. And everybody loves automation when it works. But often when it doesn’t work, it’s because it’s not being given the right data to do what it needs to do and that’s metadata. So if we don’t have the correct metadata in there in the first place, you can’t expect the various solutions you have downstream, that are intended to automate other processes, to operate correctly. And so that’s probably the simplest way I can put it, Tyler, is that you’re going to make things much less efficient and not allow the processes that could be automated to actually be fully automated.

Chris Lennon:

So it’s going to cost you time, It’s going to cost you money, it’s going to cost you frustration. And you’re just not going to end up with nearly as good a production as you might have otherwise, if you had done a little bit of work upfront. I hate to go back to these old sayings, but you this one just popped into my head. It’s like with a carpenter. You measure twice, cut once. It’s the same thing here. Let’s do the work upfront to make sure we’ve got this all lined up and then everything just falls into place.

Tyler Kern:

That’s an absolutely fantastic point. You’re absolutely right about that. Now, as I mentioned off the top, you wrote the book on metadata. It is called the Media Workflow Puzzle, and I believe you have it there for us to show us. There it is on the screen. Tell us about the book and why you felt that this topic was important enough to write a book about it.

Chris Lennon:

Yeah, it’s not like I had nothing to do and just said, oh, let’s just write a book. This actually came out of working with an industry colleague by the name of Clyde Smith. We were looking at the state of the industry and what do people who are new to the industry or executives, what do they go to in order to learn how all this stuff, that we all take for granted, fits together? And Clyde and I looked at that and were like, nobody’s actually written any of this down. It’s just captured in the heads of all of us, how this all works. And we all just assume everybody else knows what we know. What we hadn’t realized though, is none of us know it all.

Chris Lennon:

So we decided boy, it would be a good service back to the industry to put a book together and at a very high level, not super technical or anything, just very high level, outline how The Media Workflow Puzzle, if you will, fits together from top to bottom. And we chose the word puzzle very intentionally. I think earlier in the podcast here, I mentioned media workflow chain. And so I’m as guilty as anybody else. It’s not really a chain. The chain implies, you’ve got one link, goes to another link, goes to another link and it’s nice and linear. Wouldn’t it be nice if it was that simple? It’s not that simple. It’s actually more like a three-dimensional puzzle. So that’s why we use the word puzzle, is that everything interconnects in here and it iterates back on itself, it’s not a linear thing at all.

Chris Lennon:

So we chose that title and we decided early on that the best way to do this would be to pull in the best of the best that we could find in terms of industry experts, round them up and say okay, you know production really well. Or you know post-production really well, or distribution or what have you, and have them all work together. And the sum would be greater than the parts. So there was a really interesting phenomenon that happened. We brought together all these people who had decades of experience, like we did, and we all thought we knew it all. And we’re like, oh yeah, we’re experts. We’ll write all this. To a person, every one of the people who contributed to this book came back and said, oh, wow. By doing this, I realized how much I don’t understand.

Chris Lennon:

Both have their own area, which is embarrassing enough. You say, you’re a distribution expert. And when you start to actually write it down and you’re like, well, why do we do that? I know we’ve always done that, but why do we do that? But then we were actually very inclusive of everybody and when we collected altogether, and then we edited it down, we said, we want all of you to read this and just make sure that we’ve captured the spirit of what you wrote. It was challenging to take 20 different voices and make them sound like one. But I think we did our best with that. But then when people read the whole book, the contributors read the whole book, they said, oh, wow. I understood even less about the other parts of this than I thought I did.

Chris Lennon:

It was very humbling for all of us, but a great exercise. And I think it validated why it was important to put this down in writing, because none of us know all this. And we found since it’s been released, I’ve received a lot of of feedback from a lot of industry veterans saying oh man, this is great that you’ve actually got this all in one place. Now I actually understand a little bit better how this all fits together.

Tyler Kern:

Yeah. You’re absolutely right. That’s one of my favorite phrases. You don’t know what you don’t know, like you said. And I think it’s important to realize that and to understand that sometimes in life. And you said that you thought you were an expert until you started doing research for this book, and you realize that there are just a lot of things that maybe you didn’t know as much about as you thought you did. So what sorts of things did you learn about metadata that might surprise other people as well?

Chris Lennon:

Woo boy. That’s a tough one. There wasn’t one thing. There were so many things that I learned and I think it was more understanding why different things happen in a particular sequence and why they happen the way they do. And then you understand why getting that metadata correct in the first place is absolutely critical. In the past, you’d say, well I just know I need this set of metadata, but you didn’t necessarily know exactly what it was driving at. So it’s hard for me, Tyler, to point at one specific example of that, because there were a lot of aha moments in the process of doing this, where I’m like oh, now this makes sense. Now I understand why this is so critical. Maybe if I was to distill it down a little bit, the one thing that stood out to me is people talk a lot now about the long tail of distribution where even live productions are living on in being reversioned for later use and different distribution mechanisms.

Chris Lennon:

And that the content seems to have a much longer life than any of us ever imagined it would, with the new, over the top platforms and people being able to get to, or expecting to be able to get to virtually any piece of content on any device at any time they want to get at it. Well that doesn’t all happen by accident. And so I guess that’s the biggest thing that occurred to me, is that this is now a much bigger problem or opportunity, depending on how you want to put it. Let’s say it’s an opportunity. It’s a much bigger opportunity for us to really realize the full value of the content that we’re creating and that none of this happens without having the metadata captured correctly in the first place and passed all the way down. So yeah, I guess the new world we’re in now, with a non-linear and on-demand distribution of content and the fact that it lives forever, now it’s a much bigger opportunity.

Tyler Kern:

That’s fantastic to hear. And I think you’re absolutely right. So people should definitely go pick up the book, The Media Workflow Puzzle. It is a fantastic book that really dives into metadata. You mentioned earlier that idea of automation and the garbage in garbage out idea, and as we continue to move forward in media, how important do you think that this will be and how can people educate themselves in this area of automation?

Chris Lennon:

Well, I’ll answer the last question first, Tyler. They can educate themselves by reading the book. I’m terrible that way. But I do think the book does not provide all the answers. It’s less than 300 pages, so it’s a very high level kind of thing, but maybe it opens eyes more to the fact that we all get guilty of going into things, not only in our jobs, but in our daily lives, with blinders on, that we’re like okay, I’m really good at this. I’m going to focus at this. And we often don’t look in the periphery of what’s going on on either side of us. And so I hope that it actually opens up people’s eyes more to that, that they need to be aware of how other things interact within the whole media ecosystem and how important it is that it all interact.

Chris Lennon:

And if I were to back up to the first part of your question, which going forward, is this whole thing going to become more important, less important? I would have to think that this is all going to become even more important because every year we’re leaning more and more on automated processes, on artificial intelligence, machine learning. And you can’t just say that well okay, we’re going to have artificial intelligence machine learning. The computers are going to do all this for us. That’s really not the way that works. They have to be fed at least some initial intelligence and guidelines from us in order to start doing their work. And I’ve contended that we’re at the very beginning of using things like AI and ML in the media business.

Chris Lennon:

It’s at a very immature stage right now. And in fact, I would argue that most things that we’re doing, that we call AI and ML, really aren’t. They’re just cool algorithms and nice code that somebody’s written, they’re not really learning. But I think what we’re doing right now is laying the foundation for a lot of that. So I don’t want to be a total wet blanket on AI and ML. I think it’s great. And I think it’s where we’re heading with a lot of processes, but again, these things just don’t figure everything out on their own. And we as humans, can’t just step back and say, it’s all going to work.

Chris Lennon:

So again, the key to all of that, and really the reason you’re using a lot of things that are labeled today as AI and ML, is to collect metadata. That’s what they’re doing. So yeah, it’s going to be, not just because I’m a metadata geek here, I just think objectively this is going to become all that much more critical and ultimately is going to make our lives much easier when we can automate this to the nth degree. But yeah, I’d characterize it as we’re in early stages right now.

Tyler Kern:

Absolutely fantastic stuff here, Chris. Chris, I want to turn it over to you before we sign off here today to give us any final thoughts, any conclusions, anything you want to leave the audience with here today, as we wrap up our conversation.

Chris Lennon:

Final thoughts. Yeah, maybe a couple. I think it all centers around convergence, that we’re really seeing a lot of convergence in the media business. When I look at getting exposure to both things, coming from the Hollywood community for digital cinema and then the television community, both traditional and new media, you’re seeing all this converge very rapidly, both in terms of equipment being used, solutions being used, and processes. It’s all become digital. The lines between consumer, prosumer, and professional solutions are blurring every day, and I think that’s all going to continue. And really, the lines between cinema, television, new media, and even the lines between live production and more episodic or feature film production, they’re blurring as well. All these areas used to be very independent silos. And to me, those silos are breaking down all the time and it’s all converging and coming together, which depending on how you look at it, that could be terrifying to people who are used to the way it used to be.

Chris Lennon:

But I think it’s actually exciting and it opens up whole new opportunities for those of us who are maybe more traditionally television people, to learn from what’s been done in these other areas, what’s been done in Hollywood over the years that maybe we haven’t leveraged, what’s been done in the pro AV realm that we haven’t leveraged. We can all learn from each other. And I think there’s huge opportunity there to do that. And so that’s where I’d leave off. I think we’re in an exciting time here, and I think convergence is going to make this all much more interesting, and metadata is the heart of all this.

Tyler Kern:

Well, Chris, thank you again so much for joining us here today. And if you could give the book one more plug here before we, we sign off for the day.

Chris Lennon:

All right. So yeah, it’s The Media Workflow Puzzle, it kind of looks like this. There’s ebook, there’s paperback, there’s hardcover, and like you said, Tyler, you can buy it wherever you want. The best way to find it is just Google the title. It’s the SEO stuff is set up pretty well. So it’ll actually come up pretty high on the search list. And yeah, please grab a copy of it, read it, and I’d love to hear feedback from you. I enjoy opening my inbox in the morning and, and getting any feedback that we can get on it. I’ve already had people say, when are you writing a second edition of this? I don’t know, no time soon. It was a big undertaking, but who knows? In a few years, this will become dated and maybe we will.

Tyler Kern:

Fantastic stuff. The media workflow puzzle, go check it out, go make sure that you find it if you’re interested in learning a little bit more. Chris Lennon, director of standard strategy for 91��ɫ. Chris, thank you so much for joining us here on the podcast again, and sharing your expertise in the realm of metadata.

Chris Lennon:

Thanks, Tyler. Appreciate it.

Tyler Kern:

Absolutely. And everyone, thank you for tuning into another episode of Living Live with 91��ɫ. We appreciate it very much. Of course, we have plenty of episodes of the podcast for you to go back and listen to. So if you want to dive into more topics in the production world, make sure to go subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or find the podcast on 91��ɫ’s website as well. We have a lot of episodes covering a wide range of topics in the world of production that you want to go back and check out. And stay tuned for upcoming episodes. We’ll be back with more episodes of the shows shortly, but until then, for Chris Lennon, our guest today, I’ve been your host, Tyler Kern. Thank you so much for joining us.

 

 

Tyler Kern:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Living Live with 91��ɫ. I’m your host, Tyler Kern. Thanks so much for joining us for this episode of the show. Today, we’re diving into how Ross solutions solve problems and improve messaging in the corporate market. We have the perfect person joining us today to talk to all of that. His name’s Rob Luther. He is the business development manager for the corporate market at 91��ɫ. Rob, thanks so much for joining us.

Robert Luther:
Thanks for having me, Tyler.

Tyler Kern:
Absolutely. So Rob, just give us an idea of the markets that 91��ɫ serves within the corporate world, because I know that that’s kind of a vast marketplace there. So just give us an idea of some of those markets and some of those applications.

Robert Luther:
Yeah, definitely. So as you mentioned, the corporate market is vast within Ross. The markets that we serve in there are the tech sector, finance, insurance, transportation, healthcare and fitness, manufacturing, retail, energy, and hospitality. The easier way to put this is what don’t we cover the corporate market, because anything, any market that needs to communicate internally, communicate externally, train their staff, or really educate or tell a story we serve. Those are the markets that we go after and a little bit of the applications as well.

Tyler Kern:
So you mentioned communication internally, externally, that probably looks a lot different today as we sit here recording this in 2021 than it did maybe February of 2020, right? So just how has COVID-19 and maybe the events of the last year really changed the way we see and interact with corporate spaces and the way that companies are looking to leverage communication technology?

Robert Luther:
Yeah, definitely. So if you look back how COVID changed the entire world, it’s done the exact same thing in the corporate market. You have people working from home, company-wide meetings, shareholder meetings gone. You have industry conferences, any sort of group gathering, gone. And within that, your teams can’t meet. So no matter where you are, you really can’t bring any sort of large group together. And then think about people that were traveling. Nobody’s traveling, everybody’s sitting from home, just like we’re doing this now from our own home offices. It’s drastically different. So within this people thought, okay, I’m going to work from home for awhile, but that’s not the trend we’re seeing. The work from home trend I think, is just beginning. And how can we now adapt to this new trend? So working from home, you’re not being very inclusive. You’re not building a team environment.

Robert Luther:
You’re really not showing the transparency that businesses have been trying to do for years is really from a top-down look. And through video, and through even recordings like this, you’re able to show your CEO or your shareholders and bring people together and really in one-on-one or one to many instances. So if you think about that, but then with people working from home, what are you going to do with your office space? People have been investing in infrastructure for years, and now we have corporations like Ford, Google, PWC, all saying, we’re not going back. We’re going to have a hybrid workforce from here on out. People are going to work from home. So what are you doing to utilize that office space that you’ve already invested in? And re-imagining some of that office space and turning it into studios or large gathering places. And adopting the technology that Ross offers will really bring people together no matter where you are around the world.

Robert Luther:
And it’ll bring you together in a professional manner. Don’t get me wrong. I use Zoom, Teams, Webex every day, especially now over the past year. I think that usage just grown significantly. But to a point, people get sick of seeing nine talking heads on their screen. It’s what everybody’s doing. And you really need to change that and bring in professionals looking professional. And then you can even keep going down the trend of e-learning. E-learning has been a trend in the higher ed space for years, more colleges coming out, doing education online. But what are corporations going to do? Because now we can’t bring people together. And there’s already a lot of industries out there that realize, hey, if I can train people online A, I’m going to save on travel costs.

Robert Luther:
I’m going to reduce my carbon footprint and I can actually reach more people in the same amount of time, if not less time in a total way, saving money. And then really the final two in this space is your web presence and social engagement. So you really needed to differentiate yourself and people come out and you can use texts. You can develop a wonderful website, but people’s attention span for texts is about eight to 10 seconds. That’s eight to 10 seconds. Funny enough, some studies have shown that’s less than a goldfish. Reading texts, humans have less attention span than a goldfish online. Comparing to what people do watching video, which is almost 60 seconds. So produce a professional video communicating to people online. You’re going to get a 60 second attention span instead of eight. That’s really where we go with this and how COVID has drastically changed what we do every single day.

Tyler Kern:
I think you made some fantastic points there. And one of the things that stands out to me is I think a lot of people are going to hear what you say and say, yes, that’s absolutely what we want to do. We want to move in this direction and utilize our spaces, studio spaces, more engaging video content, things along those lines. But we don’t know what the first step to take is. How can an expert like 91��ɫ really provides some expertise, and some knowledge, and some know-how in this area to really get people moving in the right direction?

Robert Luther:
Yeah. So you talk about environments there first, and Ross does focus in a specific set of environments. Where we look at your live event spaces or your event slash your flex spaces. So a lot of conference rooms, auditoriums, training rooms. There’s a lot of this that people already have that you can now just adapt. But what we can also do is take your office space or take your conference room and turn it into a studio space. And that can be a hard set studio space. Like you see every day watching the news where you have a desk or you have chairs, you’re in an interview setting. Or that can be virtual. Where technology has come, you can create any world you really want to be in and exist in that space. And Ross has the talent and the expertise to either A, provide the technology for you to do so, or create that for you, working together in a partnership setting to really create any world you want to be in.

Robert Luther:
But then the other thing that it comes out is utilizing what you already have because corporations have invested in infrastructure. IT teams have made wide networks of resources for you. And how can you really connect all of those pieces together, whether it be worldwide or campus-wide, or just throughout your facility to utilize all your resources all the time? And that’s where Ross will bring our expertise to give you all the options and let you make the best decision for your company. Because everybody’s different. Everybody has a different appetite for technology. And we have the solutions to go from base level really, I’m going to call it entry level, in to video, all the way up to the most professional settings in the world where Ross works with the most major broadcast largest events worldwide, including events like the Superbowl, the Grammy’s and so on and so forth.

Tyler Kern:
So what are some tools that maybe Ross has available for some of these solutions, both small and large scale? I know that like you mentioned, you do everything from small events, all the way up to the largest events in the world, like the Superbowl. So we probably can’t go through all of them, but what are some that you want to mention that maybe stand out, or it could be particularly useful specifically in these corporate settings?

Robert Luther:
Yeah. So the main hardware pieces and we’re going to call them tools, is our live switches. So switchers are the backbone of everything that really, that Ross does. They’ve been talked about in numerous different tech talks. And it’s where Ross was founded. So what we’re able to is A, broadcast switcher is more of an editor where you’re able to select shots, select sources, layer graphics, really create the professional video broadcasts that people are used to around the world. And what they watch everyday on their TV, or streaming on their web platforms, or anything like that. The other thing is technology to bring remote participants. So a big thing in the entire corporate market is nobody’s traveling right now. We don’t have industry conferences to bring people together where Ross has products, the main one called interstellar that is able to bring in people in real time, very low latency, very high quality into their presentations.

Robert Luther:
So no matter where your shareholders are, where your participant is, we can bring them into your presentation. And then the list kind of goes on because we have the ability to bring in multiple different sources, whether that be a video, PowerPoints, any sort of image real-time data. If you wanted to use information from anywhere, we can bring that into your presentation and display it in a very professional manner. You’re not just looking at a PowerPoint on a screen and no offense, getting bored. Right. With the update, that information real time and make it compelling. And then really the last one is when we start talking about interconnected facilities and sharing resources, Ross has the best routers in the market right now in regards to their capabilities and their space savings. So when Alteryx was released a few years ago, it was revolutionary.

Robert Luther:
You’re able to use multiple IO’s, so your inner connectivity. You’re able to mix audio. You’re able to share resources, it’s all there. And the best thing is then you bring it all back to the control system where people are saying, okay, you’re talking about all this different technology. I don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t control it. I don’t even know what a router is. The nice thing is with the expertise we can create custom control panels. I say, custom, everybody thinks expensive. They are custom. So they’re tailored to your solution, but it’s just like what people are used to in the corporate space. They’re, Extron, Crestron, AMX control systems where we can actually work with them as well to create a really intuitive easy to support system that they can use for whatever they want to do.

Tyler Kern:
And I think one of the big things during this time is simply just how well can you adapt and innovate and adjust to what the new normal is, right? It’s something that we talk about quite a bit. Everyone says, oh, the new normal. I think that one of the big challenges for many different businesses across a number of industries is just, how do you adjust to this? And how do you adapt in a way that works for you? And I think that what you’re describing and the solutions that you’re describing can be a key differentiator for businesses that can drive real value in today’s new normal, in today’s new environment.

Robert Luther:
Yeah. So the value that these solutions bring is unmatched right now. Because when you have people working from home, as we kind of mentioned, you’re trying to be a transparent company. You’re trying to be inclusive. You’re trying to still build a team mentality. And this technology brings people together. It allows you to like I said, bring people in from around the world. And then social engagement, when you’re trying to communicate to people outside of your company, whether that be through a social media platform, through a streaming service, through something we’ve always used YouTube, Vimeo, so on and so forth. It’s how do you cut past all the rest of the noise that’s there? How do you differentiate your message? And that is creating professionalism. It’s making you look the best you possibly can to your audience. And then it’s being compelling and interactive.

Robert Luther:
What people don’t want to do is sit there and preach. I don’t like doing it. I utilize all my presentations and two-way communication all the time. I’m always asking people to ask questions, come back, talk to me about what they want. Because that’s what anybody wants, whether you’re in the fitness market and you’re just trying to create an interactive fitness class because your fitness centers now shut down. You can’t go. You can do that now with the technology we can offer.

Robert Luther:
And then the other portion of it is really within the corporate market. How do we get away from a talking head in a conference room? How do we get away from sitting at a desk and looking at a PowerPoint on our computer screen? That’s what we’re trying to do here. And that’s what we are doing here with companies around the world. Ross operates in over 100 countries around the world. We have customers in all of those countries. And we’re bringing this solution to corporations everywhere. A lot have already bought in. And we have communication going on with a bunch of others that have adopted technology. Or people that are like, what are you doing? I see people are using more video. How can you help us? And we go through that entire process, no matter where you are on the spectrum.

Tyler Kern:
Well, this has been just a fantastic conversation. And I feel like it has really spoken to the current market where things are and how people can take advantage of this changing dynamic in that corporate market. And so, Rob, just to wrap us up today with any final thoughts you have, maybe a conclusion statement. Or anything we haven’t mentioned yet, just in this particular marketplace. Anything else you’d like to leave us with as we wrap up this episode today?

Robert Luther:
The biggest thing that I talk about is being able to tell your story effectively. And that’s how I’ve built my entire career. I’ve been in the AB space. I’ve been in the sports broadcast space and now I’m coming back to Ross, really bringing the technology that I’ve known and used forever to everybody in the corporate market. And I guess my closing to say is, don’t be afraid of the technology. Because it is more intuitive and more user-friendly than you can really imagine it. And until you get your hands on it, or until you sit through and kind of show what Ross can do for you, you won’t know.

Robert Luther:
So ask the questions because eventually your competition is going to adopt this technology and you might as well be the first one to it. So you can differentiate yourself from them. And that’s, hey, maybe it’s attracting the best employee that’s available, or it’s bringing in that new customer, or sharing your knowledge with other people. There are so many different avenues we can take with the technology. You really just got to jump in and see if it works for you. And you know what, for the majority industry right now, we’ve already realized it has.

Tyler Kern:
Absolutely. If people want to take that first step and maybe ask some more questions of you, get some more information, what’s a good way for them to do that? Where can they go?

Robert Luther:
Yeah. So the easiest way, and what if you want to get an in-depth look at what Ross can offer, use our website, rossvideo.com. Within that there’s an application tab. It is the corporate market. Click down. My contact information is on our website. So is a lot of other sales staff. And then for corporations that are out there interested in this, the best thing is Ross values our business partners. So you may have an AB integrator, or an IT integrator, or somebody you’re working with. You may know somebody in the broadcast space that knows Ross, reach out to them. We talk to them all the time. We value our business partners worldwide as they are the ones that are really able to blend those systems together, where we provide all the tools and the know-how, they’re on the streets with us doing our installs.

Robert Luther:
So between those two, feel free to reach out. And at the same time, you can find me on social media. Yeah, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, we’re all there sharing what we know and the things we learn every day. Even as Ross, I learned something new every day in the corporate market and what people are looking for. And I like to share that with the rest of the world.

Tyler Kern:
Fantastic, fantastic steps. So take that first step, get in touch with Rob and the team at 91��ɫ. Get more information, ask other people about 91��ɫ, as well as they are just synonymous with fantastic equipment in this industry. And so, Rob, thank you so much for joining me here today on Living Live with 91��ɫ and sharing a little bit more about the corporate market.

Robert Luther:
Thanks for having me, Tyler.

Tyler Kern:
And everyone, thank you for tuning into this episode of Living Live with 91��ɫ. If this is the first episode you’ve checked out, we have a ton of other episodes so make sure to go check those out and subscribe, to stay up-to-date with the latest from 91��ɫ. But until then, for my guest today, Rob Luther. I’ve been your host, Tyler Kern. We’ll talk again soon.

 

Tyler Kern:
Hey everyone and welcome. I am your host today, Tyler Kern. Thank you so much for joining me. Today, we’re discussing 91��ɫ’s ACID Cam and the technology behind it. I’m thrilled to be joined by Gina Thompson. She’s the business development manager for robotics at 91��ɫ. Gina, thank you so much for joining me.

Gina Thompson:
No problem. Happy to be here.

Tyler Kern:
Excellent, excellent. Well, before we dive too far into ACID Cam, what it is, all of its functionality and features, first let’s get a little bit of background on you, Gina. Tell us a little bit about your work history before you were at 91��ɫ and some of the experience that you had that helps inform what you do in your role at 91��ɫ now.

Gina Thompson:
Sure. So my experience kind of varied, but it starts in network television. I kind of came up through the ranks working in studios, in and around studios, doing video shading, running cameras, running jibs, running jibs for outdoor sports. So I worked in and around cameras quite a bit.

Gina Thompson:
And then I actually moved into the education sector where I worked as a professor for AV and technical education in Florida. So that was quite fun as well. And then after that, I got pulled into Ross based on some experience with a salesperson who met me and thought, “Hey, I know of a really good job that you might really like,” and I ended up here.

Gina Thompson:
My background is… Really, it’s surrounding cameras in a lot of ways, and most of that being video shading. I really enjoy shading and a lot of my students, too. When I was a teacher, that was the one thing that I was the most passionate about, was teaching students how to shade. I felt like it was a lost art. When I actually came on at Ross, that was one of the main reasons why they had hired me, is because they wanted someone to help them make their cameras look good. So that’s what brought me here.

Tyler Kern:
Well, that is fantastic. So you are the perfect person, really, to help us break down and discuss in a little bit more detail the ACID Cam. Let’s start off talking about 91��ɫ’s ACID Cam. Tell us about this product. Just give us a broad overview of the product and the primary features that we should know about.

Gina Thompson:
Sure. The ACID Cam itself, if you look at it, it’s a green camera. It has neon green on the side, so it kind of looks like your chroma key green on the side. Everyone’s always like, “That’s a really strange color for a camera.”

Gina Thompson:
But it was done on purpose because when we first released ACID Camera, it was meant to be used with virtual sets. The entire extra fun, special sauce of that camera was working with a virtual. It’s called UltrachromeHR. That is the secondary output on the backside of the ACID Cam. So it has an STD one and then an SDI two. That SDI two, rather than being used for your viewfinder like you would normally use it for, we actually adjusted that and changed the technology inside the camera so that it actually outputs 0:4:4 outside of that second SDI out, meaning that… Usually, if you want to get a full bandwidth picture or, in other words, a full-resolution picture, I mean, you have 4:4:4 data that you’re looking for which means full sampling of luminance and full sampling of chrominance.

Gina Thompson:
As I said, there are two different outputs. These come into our keyer, So the Ross UltrachromeHR keyer actually takes both of those outputs from the camera as inputs. You get a 4:2:2 out of SDI one and a 0:4:4 out of SDI two, and it actually composites them together. In the end, you end up with all of the luminance coming out of one output and all of the chrominance coming out of another. It gives you a full-resolution picture that you’re able to key with, which is great because it’s not compressed.

Gina Thompson:
Usually when you go to a full-resolution picture, in order to fit down the bandwidth of SDI, it does have to be compressed. But in this case, it doesn’t because we’re using two separate outputs. That is our special sauce.

Gina Thompson:
What that really does is it helps in keying to get you those fine details, fine details meaning stray hairs on your anchor or even edges so they’re not as jagged. Because it is sampling on a per pixel basis, you’re not going to have to fill in… It’s not going to have to guess what the pixels are in between.

Gina Thompson:
In addition to that, at Ross we do a really great job with our solutions. When we were thinking ACID Cam, we were thinking, “Wow, we’re doing this virtual solution as well.” It’s a really, really great addition to being able to have a customer come to us and sell them everything they need. Not only would they be getting the virtual software, they’d also be getting the camera. They’d be getting the robotics. They could get the lenses from us if they needed to, and they can get the keyers from us. It was just a really easy addition into a product that we already sold, and it made it a lot easier for our customers when they came to us asking about that type of thing.

Tyler Kern:
You mentioned a couple of different times virtual sets. That seems to be a pretty ideal setting for the ACID Cam. What are some other primary use cases where ACID Cam really shines?

Gina Thompson:
Absolutely. The virtual sets is our first place where we look to sell those. But in addition to that, there’s also a couple of other really great features, the first one being HDR. The HDR settings in the ACID Cam, you get three different choices. You have two different types of HLG, and then you have Dolby HDR. You can go between either one of these.

Gina Thompson:
If you like to do HDR in your chain, where that is really helpful is if… I’ll give you an example from actually a customer that is using the ACID Cam. They are located on the corner of a really busy street in the United States. Their entire studio’s surrounded by windows. What they were looking for is something that would stop the anchors from being basically so blown out. They were basically so dark because the background was so much brighter than them, that the cameras they were currently using couldn’t compensate for that.

Gina Thompson:
We went in there and we showed them how they could use the ACID Cam with the HLG on. The HLG allows them to still use the current bandwidth of their SDI that is just standard. They could turn on HLG and it’ll work through their system, just like if they were using just an SDR image. We were able to show them that that additional range, that additional dynamic range helped to kind of, I would say, level out the lighting so it wasn’t so dark or so bright behind them that it made their anchors super dark. We see this in a lot of different areas. This is just one example in a studio, but there’s also other places where HDR would be really important or at least useful.

Gina Thompson:
I’ve also given some demos to different people in different churches where they’re working with very limited lighting. HDR helps them. The additional range helps them work with the lighting that they have on-site and not having to really add anything new. Also in corporate environments where they’re working with exactly the same thing, large windows behind their presenters, the HDR elements come into play and they’re very, very helpful.

Gina Thompson:
Something else I really like about the ACID Cam, and you actually have this in most broadcast cameras but working with the ACID Cam through my demos and with my customers, we use the skin tone a lot. We work with skin tone. We do, what I always used to tell my students, digital makeup. But we work with that particular circuit quite a bit and on the ACID Cam, it works very, very well.

Tyler Kern:
That’s really fascinating. What kind of feedback have you gotten from clients, from customers that have used ACID Cam? What has that been like? Just kind of give me some stories, some examples of how they’ve utilized it and what their feedback has been.

Gina Thompson:
Sure. The customers that I can think of right off the top of my head were customers that went into buying the ACID Cam as part of a mixed set. What I mean by that is part of their set is virtual and part of their set is real and it’s a hard set. For certain segments of their show, they have on robotics. They have the camera on one side of their broadcast studio shooting a virtual set, somebody in front of a green screen interacting with the green screen, interacting with elements that are popping up in virtual reality. And then they throw it over to the hard set to do the standard news every day. Those customers have been very, very happy with it. It’s not just the ACID Cam that they have been happy with. It’s the full ecosystem.

Gina Thompson:
In that case, not only are they using our ACID Cam, but they’re using our Furio robotics as well. Not only are they able to pull up on their computers the shading which is all done through DashBoard, they’re also able to control their robotics in the exact same place. It makes it really easy on the operator to not only learn how to shade, not only learn how to run robotics, but really make it in the most simplest terms possible so that anybody can just jump on here and start using them on day one. So that’s been some feedback from that customer.

Gina Thompson:
Another customer that comes to mind that’s been happy with our ACID Cam is somewhere where you’re doing a lot of teaching. We have one customer that they work in a large city that they actually do teaching. I would say their clients… So they’re a client of us, but their clients are just teachers. They come in and they shoot their whole class in a virtual environment. These teachers actually set up, prior to coming in, all of their virtual elements. What I mean by that is they’re working with their backgrounds, whatever elements they need to pop up in front of them in augmented reality, and then they have to build those, put them into the system and then come in and teach using these tools.

Gina Thompson:
The ACID Cam has been really helpful for them because they’ve been able to not only use it to kind of achieve the end result that they’re looking for [inaudible 00:12:27] class, but again, it’s the full ecosystem. These teachers are not technical wizards. They’re not somebody that totally understands how robotics or cameras or switchers and all that work. But because of the simplicity of the interface to control the cameras and the easiness to just plug right into them and be able to shade them up, they’ve had a really good experience with them as well.

Gina Thompson:
Most feedback that comes back to me and to us at Ross has been because of the interface, how easy it is to shade the cameras, how easy it is to recall scenes. It’s not that other cameras can’t do that, but we do it using software. The software ties into the rest of the Ross ecosystem, so it just makes it really easy on the client side of things.

Tyler Kern:
You finished that right where I wanted to go and just… Because I just wanted to mention that it really does seem like the ACID Cam fits seamlessly into the overall Ross ecosystem in a fantastic way that that makes it easier for users, right?

Gina Thompson:
Right. Correct. That’s the idea. That was part of the whole thought process of bringing cameras onboard at Ross, was to be able to offer a solution from the lens to the server, so from capture to storage. We want to be able to have everything that our customers need in one place, and then also be able to support all that in one place. It makes it a lot easier for a lot of people that are used to having to call multiple different vendors for different products on hand. Some things still, they might have to go to other people, but we try to try to make it as inclusive as possible.

Tyler Kern:
Gina, as we wrap up the conversation today, is there anything else that we need to cover on ACID Cam that you think is worth mentioning, or do you have any summary statements that just summarizes the benefits, maybe, of what ACID Cam can bring to a facility?

Gina Thompson:
So ACID and any of the special things, and ways to wrap up this conversation, it’s really just that it’s never… When you buy a product from Ross, whether it be the ACID Camera or the UCHR that you would need to get that special feature out of it, we’re here with you until the end. You’re not buying a product that just has one really great thing about it. There’s multiple things about it, and the ACID Cam just really ties into that thought process.

Tyler Kern:
Absolutely. Gina Thompson, business development manager for robotics at 91��ɫ. Gina, thank you so much for joining us today.

Gina Thompson:
Thank you, Tyler.

Tyler Kern:
Everyone, thank you for tuning into this episode. We appreciate you joining us very much. Of course, for more content, make sure to visit rossvideo.com and of course we have more content there. We’ll be back soon with more videos just like this one. But until then, I’ve been your host today, Tyler Kern. Thanks for watching.

 

Tyler Kern:

91��ɫ has a long history with production switchers, so there’s no one better to join this episode to discuss the past, present, and future of production switchers than the CEO of 91��ɫ himself, David Ross. David, thank you so much for joining me today.

David Ross:

Thanks for having me.

Tyler Kern:

Absolutely. So David, for anyone who doesn’t know, can you explain what a production switcher does, and its importance in terms of the anatomy of a broadcast studio?

David Ross:

Absolutely. A production switcher is, you could think about it as a video editor that you have to run in real time. So if you sit there and you say, “I’m going to put a production together, and I’m going to figure out where all my cuts are going to be, and my edit and any sort of effects are going to happen, any layers you’re going to add to the video, maybe a title, it’s right there behind me or in front of me, the CEO 91��ɫ,” it’s supposed to be able to do things like that on the fly, and make it look as good as it was going to be if you did it in post-production.

David Ross:

And so, the person who runs this production switcher is almost as important as the switcher is. Kind of like you’ve got a piano, but the piano player is an integral part of this as well, because it’s a bit of an art to run this. And it’s also like riding a fighter jet sometimes, where every second counts and you press the wrong button and something very bad can happen, like putting somebody backstage who maybe isn’t doing what they expected to be put on air, you can suddenly put them on air. So there’s some big mistakes that you can certainly make in running a production switcher.

Tyler Kern:

Absolutely. You could take the nicest piano in the world and put me in front of it, and I’m still only going to know how to play Chopsticks. And so, you’re right. It’s one of those situations where the person and then the product have to work in tandem together to create something great.

David Ross:

Absolutely. So sometimes, when we’re designing production switchers, we have to remember we’re, in some ways, developing an artist’s tool. And so, a lot has to go into the human interface of that, as well as the technology. Another thing that it can do, for example, is green screen and things like that, where you can superimpose video and things like that. So there’s a lot of technology under the hood, and some of these switchers can be hundreds of thousands of dollars, so they can be quite expensive as well.

Tyler Kern:

Certainly, certainly. No, that absolutely makes sense. And we know that 91��ɫ has a long history with production switchers. In fact, I believe it was the first product that 91��ɫ produced in 1974, was a switcher. Can you explain your dad’s role in the development of switchers and their design?

David Ross:

Oh, well that goes all the way back to my father. When he was 14 years old, he worked at a television station as a transmitter operator, and lied about his age, and eventually got involved in working in the studio and saw something doing wipes going across the screen, and layering, and things like that, and he wondered how that was done. So he actually designed a production switcher while he was still a teenager and hadn’t even graduated from high school, just from knowing electronics, from looking at books on tubes, and things like that.

David Ross:

And I think the network came down and said, “You’re using a switcher on the air. We haven’t bought one for you yet. How can you possibly…” “John Ross did it.” And they actually used that switcher for many, many years. And he actually went on to working at another company after working at the CBC designing television stations after he graduated, designing the very first solid state switcher. In other words, getting rid of tubes, going into chips, and integrated circuits, and things like that.

David Ross:

And he also had the patent for being able to chroma key on colors other than blue. So he actually thought through, green screens would be quite good. It’s good for the flesh tones, and things like that, and how it all works. So he was one of the founders of that. And in fact, he just won an award for SMPTE for a Presidential Proclamation, which is saying he was up there with Edison, Kodak, Disney, and he shared the award this year with the founder of Netflix. So we have a lot of history in production switchers and in the base technologies. So yeah, when he started 91��ɫ, switchers were an obvious first choice.

Tyler Kern:

That is an absolutely incredible story. And I mean, you did out your dad for being an underage worker, but it seems to have worked out really, really well for him. And he’s created some amazing things, obviously. And so, how did you get involved in switcher design with Ross?

David Ross:

Well, I was kind of born into it. Even before the switcher was founded when I was nine years old, I remember going to a little TV studio in the previous company, and sitting on a little stool, and they put a camera in front of me in the 1960s, and I’d be able to say, “Oh, this is like a mirror, but backwards.” You look at yourself in the video. It was quite exciting, actually.

David Ross:

And I worked on test systems and things like that in manufacturing when I was a student in high school, and then when I was in university, I actually went on and started redesigning switcher software and designing circuit boards for the switchers as well. So by the time I graduated, it was easier for me to slide in and just suddenly become in charge of all production switcher research and development, and actually marketing in a lot of ways, as well, right out of school.

Tyler Kern:

So over the years, what changes have you seen in production switchers, in terms of features and industrial design? What types of evolutions have occurred over the years?

David Ross:

One of the things that’s interesting, you used to be able to get, and you can still sort of buy them, but they’re not mainstream, the chroma keyers that do the green screen, you could buy that outboard. You used to be able to, if you wanted to do wipes, something going across a screen, or things like that, that would be done outboard. Even the control panel, you would actually have to punch yourself in a machine shop. It was something that was done custom.

David Ross:

And what’s happened over the years is switchers have just been this magnet that’s brought in more and more different types of technologies that used to be in external boxes that have just been folded in. So some of the first things that we put in were digital video effects, like being able to squeeze back boxes. And then, back after that, when it was really cool to do video page turns, and warp effects, and things like that, that went into production switchers. They used to be standalone boxes.

David Ross:

And then, when we went to high-definition and we had to change from 4:3 video to 16:9, we had to put aspect ratio converters into them, and then up converters and down converters to change the video resolutions. And then we put color correctors in, and then that tied into when we’re now doing HDR video, the high resolution color and so on. And control has gone into them as well.

David Ross:

So it used to be that if you wanted to control a robotic camera and just tweak the shot to get the person in the center of the screen, you would have a second device. That has gone into switchers. So switchers can now control, you can say, almost everything in the studio. So they’ve become this, not just a video mixer and not just a video format converter and manipulator. They’ve become controllers of the entire production.

Tyler Kern:

That’s incredible, just to see more and more features rolled into these, and how they’re able to accommodate those changes and evolutions over the years. So, David, I’m sure you’ve seen switchers being used in all kinds of settings, but what’s the most unexpected place that you’ve ever seen a switcher being used?

David Ross:

Well, I think one of my favorites was actually when somebody said that they had taken it into an active volcano to do some sort of a broadcast. I mean, that’s not a normal studio application. There’s a lot of things that could go wrong. We didn’t test the switcher to see if it worked when submerged in lava. I liked that one, for sure.

David Ross:

I think part of them, is when I go to broadcast stations all over the place, and I see them at the highest level for doing things like that and stadiums as well. But when I go to a concert, like a rock concert, and I remember seeing The Police a few years ago when they did their world tour, it was so cool to be able to walk to that tent right in the middle of the crowd, where you know they’ve got the audio mixers and the video switchers somewhere, and I said, “Hey,” and they’re like, “Ah, another fan, another fan. Whatever. Go away.”

David Ross:

And I was like, “By the way, what’s the model of production switcher you’re using.” And they’re like, “Oh, this guy’s actually asking an intelligent question.” And they say, “We’re using a Ross Synergy.” And I went, “Oh, I’m David Ross. You’re using my switcher. How awesome is that?” “Oh, come on in. Let me show you.” So, it’s another way of being a fan of your favorite band or whatever else, to actually know that they’re a customer of yours.

Tyler Kern:

Oh my gosh, that’s an incredible experience. That just has to be amazing, getting to have that sort of experience. So, David, let’s talk about the future. What does the production switcher of the future look like? In 2030, let’s say, will it looks similar to the way it does now, or what kinds of changes can you foresee coming to production switchers?

David Ross:

One of the funny things about technology at this time period, is it’s not so much an evolution as a fragmentation in the directions that things are going. So, it used to be that switchers were sort of medium expensive, for example, and now there’s medium expensive, really expensive, and really, really inexpensive, and everything in between, to hit every single market price point, and use point, and so on.

David Ross:

From the point of view of the technology that they’re on, with Moore’s law still happening, it’s getting harder, but transistors are getting smaller and electronics are getting more powerful, we’re able to pack more and more technology into a smaller package for a lower price. And so, when we’re doing that, that’s going to just continue along for quite some time. We’ll continue to take things from other technology, I’m sure, and build them into the switchers.

David Ross:

But at the same time, cloud is happening at the same time. And so, how do we make switchers that are software, spin them up in Amazon, and maybe it takes up one computer in Amazon, maybe it takes up 20 computers in Amazon, depending on what you’re trying to do and how many signals you want to mix. That’s going to happen as well. But then, the control surface is evolving as well. I mean, we just came out with a new control panel, just about a month ago, called TouchDrive, and we put the equivalent of 50 cell phone displays onto this control panel, and added touching gestures to every one of those 50 cell phone displays. And it totally changes how immediate you can interact with this switcher to do things live, and it just looks spectacular.

David Ross:

So, if you own a television production anything, if you’re giving a tour, one of the first places you’re going to go is to the switcher, because it is just a work of art, just like your grand piano and your audio mixer. These are the things that you’re proud of, and so on. At the same time, the switcher is also evolving into even more sophisticated devices, and Ross is a world leader in something called OverDrive, where the switcher panel is an option. You don’t even need to buy it, and all the control I was talking about, you take that and you put it on steroids, and now there’s just one guy with a mouse doing the news.

David Ross:

The graphics that show up, all the robotic camera controls, the video, playing stories, doing remotes, you name it, there’s one guy that’s just sitting there, going, click, click, click, next, next, next, problem coming up, fixed, and so on, which is completely… Imagine trying to play a piano with a mouse and a touch screen, and have a sound fantastic and be immediate. That’s what we’ve been able to do with OverDrive. Maybe we should do that with pianos. I’m going to think about that. It could be a new product.

Tyler Kern:

That would be helpful for someone like me.

David Ross:

Yeah. So, I think it’s really exciting, not just the way we think about switchers today, but all of the different directions that it’s going in and all the fun designing it for customers.

Tyler Kern:

Well, that’s incredible. And I loved getting to hear you talk about the past, the present, and the future for production switchers, where we’ve been and where we’re going, because I think it’s incredible. And you can’t take 91��ɫ out of that history of production switchers, because you are just such an integral part of what’s going on in this world. And it’s been awesome to get to hear more of your stories, and to hear about your experience with The Police. That was certainly a good story. So David Ross, CEO of 91��ɫ. David, thank you so much for joining me today and talking production switchers with me.

David Ross:

Thanks. It was an honor.

 

Tyler Kern:

Climate change is a crucial issue that affects all of us and it’s going to require everyone to examine their lives and determine where they can make a difference. And joining me today to talk about this issue and the measures 91��ɫ is taking to go green is Jeff Poapst. He is the Senior Vice President of Manufacturing and Services at 91��ɫ Limited. Jeff, thank you so much for being here.

Jeff Poapst:

Well, thank you, Tyler.

Tyler Kern:

Well, I’m excited to dive into this topic with you because it is one that is extremely important. We’re going to talk a little bit more about what Ross is doing here in just a moment. But it feels like for most people, Jeff, that there is a moment or an event or a time in their life that causes them to think more seriously about climate change. Do you have a moment like that or a story that you can share with us?

Jeff Poapst:

I might, but it’s going to be a little disturbing that it’s back in the ’70s of all things. Back when I was in high school, we developed a little bit of an interest, that was around the first oil shock, right after that, developed a little interest in sustainable energy, did some research at the time, a couple of high school projects on nuclear energy and wind and how you can generate wind at a home wind farm if you want it to. So that’s a long time ago and it’s come a long way since then.

Tyler Kern:

It really has come a long way since then. And a lot of things have happened. Some measures have been taken, some have not. So what makes now the right time to really have a good formal discussion about green initiatives and climate change?

Jeff Poapst:

There’s a moment. There’s significant science developed in the last 20 years to understand weather and climate and the differences between the two and where this is all going. And now is the right time, because of 91��ɫ and our broadcast industry as a whole can influence society as leaders and contribute to that groundswell of improvement. People are rallying around in a lot of places in the world, not everywhere, rallying around the Paris Agreement, rallying around the need to get our carbon footprint down and to improve our situation and keep our climate a little bit less effected by carbon. We’re all trying to keep that temperature rise down.

Tyler Kern:

Absolutely. Absolutely, and I think one of the things that that stands out is it’s incumbent on everyone to do their part. I think there’s a tendency for people to think, “Oh, I’m just one person,” or, “We’re just this company.” How much of a difference can we really make?” But really that’s where it all starts, is everyone realizing, “Here’s the area where I can make a difference,” and then taking that and running with it, right?

Jeff Poapst:

That’s exactly right. And if you’re wondering how much difference an individual can make or a family can make, there are carbon calculators easily available all over the web. You can use them. They’re simple, straightforward. And I got back into this a few years ago, and after hearing that the average carbon footprint for the household in, say, Europe is about five tons a year, we have to get down to two tons a year to limit our temperature rises. Came back and calculated mine and my wife’s, we were up in the 20s and I thought, “That’s a little high.” In North America, it’s a little different society, a little different consumption patterns, and we can certainly improve.

Tyler Kern:

Certainly, certainly. And I think that’s the case for everybody. There’s things that we can all be doing to do a better job in this regard. And so what measures is 91��ɫ taking in this endeavor to go green as a company? What sorts of things is 91��ɫ doing to make a difference in this regard.

Jeff Poapst:

Here at 91��ɫ, we’ve been going down this road for probably 12 or 13 years. It started with products initially, and we’ve continued to try to develop products that have a smaller footprint, physical footprint, smaller power consumption, more efficient, more effective. And that progresses every year and we invest a lot in R&D to achieve those ends, but we also try to manage our supply chain. Anything that’s big and heavy or bulky costs money and takes energy to ship, and so we source most of our metal and all of our packaging locally. That helps a little bit. We switched over to completely recyclable packaging, primarily corrugated, got to be 12 years ago now. So we’ve been doing all of these things and then slowly improving our facilities, going to zero VOC paints, flat panel lighting in our facilities, and some of these things all help a little bit.

Jeff Poapst:

And now we can go a little farther. We’re planning a factory expansion, and that’s a fairly major commitment. The factory is something we’re going to use for 20 or 30 years, and this expansion is our chance to really make the building, what we’re going for is net zero carbon. We want to take this opportunity of the expansion to drive a net zero carbon business.

Tyler Kern:

That’s fantastic. And I can’t wait to see and to learn more about that facility and how 91��ɫ is going to go about doing that. And one of the things about climate change is that it’s been a consistent issue on our radar just now for so long, and there can be other issues that pop up and take some attention away from this. But this really is maybe the most pressing and important issue of our time and the most important thing that we can be thinking about talking about. And so these initiatives by Ross aren’t just lip service to something because it’s a fad of the day. This is really a big undertaking, building a new facility like this, and it is because of the size of the issue that this really is as we talk about climate change and the effects of it. It’s a massive issue that’s been going on for so long and sometimes our attention gets diverted. But what Ross is doing really is maybe a flag in the ground to say, “Hey, this is a very big issue that Ross is taking seriously.”

Jeff Poapst:

You’re exactly right, Tyler. And this is a topic we could talk about this for days in one flavor or another. But unlike some of the urgent issues of the day, unlike technology change and some of these things, climate and its effect on human habitation, this is a multi-generational problem. This is something that our commitment to climate improvement and sustainability has to survive changes of government. It’s got to survive the four year cycle that we’re all prone to. And that’s the approach we’ve taken here at Ross. So we’ve been working on this at a low level for 12 or 14 years, but now it’s time to take it to the next level. We have an opportunity now with factory expansion. There’s a couple of other things we’re doing in the next year or so, and these are steps that have already been taken by a number of other companies around the world.

Jeff Poapst:

And that is a more detailed measurement of our carbon footprint and more explicit objective setting as interim objectives on our way to net zero as a company. Net zero as a whole company is going to take some time. Net zero as a factory is something that we can achieve we think in the next three to five years. But all of this takes concerted effort, disciplined effort over a long period of time, as you said.

Tyler Kern:

I think one of the complicating things about climate change and about this conversation is there’s a lot of misinformation out there. So help direct people, and maybe, do you have any suggestions for people who want to vet their sources, want to trust what they’re reading, because right now, it’s so difficult to know is, what I’m reading true? Is it not? What advice do you have for people out there who want the truth and want to know that what they’re reading is genuine and real, but they have to sift through so much stuff out there these days?

Jeff Poapst:

That’s certainly a challenge. There’s a number of really good sources around. What you might want to do, if you’re uncertain about the science is crosscheck it a little bit. And I’ll give you an example I saw a few years ago. Social media is not maybe the ideal source of accurate information. When a family friend posted something about volcanic activity being the source of carbon in our atmosphere, and she was citing a PhD from Australia. And when I looked into it, you have to look at his credentials and his source. The claims he was making didn’t line up with the U.S. Geological Survey at all. And then when I looked at this PhD gentlemen, found out he was employed, he’s on the board of directors for two very large Australian coal companies. Didn’t pan out.

Jeff Poapst:

So the information is all there. You’ve got to do your homework. Look at it with a degree of skepticism, I guess. But there are a number of really good organizations springing up around the world supporting this working on sustainability climate commitments around the Paris Agreement, around a circular economy, which is the next step, how to reuse pretty much everything that we can and eliminate waste. So beyond that, websites do change, sources of information do change. I can’t point to any particular specific ones at this point.

Tyler Kern:

Right, but I think the point that you made just about vetting sources and not just taking everything at face value but actually doing your due diligence to make sure that what you’re sharing and what you are reading is in fact backed up by the science and backed up by other sources that can verify it, I think is an important thing in today’s day and age. Because there can be so much misinformation, and so many people can have ulterior motives, especially when it comes to this conversation about climate change when there are big interests involved, whether it’s oil and gas or the coal industry, things along those lines. A lot of different people have a vested interest in this conversation and the way it goes.

Jeff Poapst:

You’re exactly right. And the science is, you can say on one hand the science is the science. It points to carbon content in our atmosphere as the major contributor to global warming. On the other hand, there’s pseudoscience or there are scientific attempts to mitigate some of the damage using fossil fuels. One of the terms I heard a few years ago was clean coal. There isn’t clean coal. There are a couple of processes to liquefy coal, but they are in fact net, when you do the full analysis of the whole process, they actually add more carbon to the atmosphere than just burning coal plain. So all of this takes some research, but the information is there. It can be deceptive though.

Tyler Kern:

As you cast your vision forward, what do you hope 91��ɫ looks like as a company in disregard 10, 15, 20 years down the road? What are the longterm goals? And then what sorts of things are being put in place now to help you reach those goals in the future?

Jeff Poapst:

That’s an interesting question. Like anybody, we’re looking at things in two and three and five year windows around planning equipment and planning processes. But a facility, a facility expansion like we’re doing causes us to be able to think in 20 years slices. More than that, the business is changing. Broadcast is changing. We have a team of people around the world that travel to customer sites and commissioning and install our equipment, and then train our customers on use of that equipment. We have been migrating that service over the past four years such that we can do almost all of that remotely now. If a customer is willing and enabled to do this, we don’t have to fly a staff member in to install the equipment. We don’t have to fly somebody in to train their staff, and stay in a hotel and all of that.

Jeff Poapst:

So, again, that can reduce the footprint. It makes things a little simpler. We don’t lose time in an airplane and we don’t tie people up for quite so long. Some customers are happy to have that service. It’s being really great in the pandemic. We can pivot to this kind of delivery. But that’s just an example in time. I think, as we see communications technologies get a little bit better, as we see people get more and more comfortable with this kind of work, working using whatever platform you choose to work through video link, we’re going to see more and more of this in society. And so if we then, to your question, if we look forward in 20 and 30 and 50 years, we probably will see less travel. It’ll be more relaxed travel.

Jeff Poapst:

The world should change a little bit more. There’s already a number of countries and states that have committed to phasing out fossil fuel powered cars. That’s going to persist. Those kind of fundamental changes will change our society and we’ll see probably gas stations reduce and disappear in time. Some of these major, major changes will change society in ways that I’m no expert so predicting that is a bit of a challenge. But less travel, more telecommunications, more video is how I would expect this to happen.

Tyler Kern:

Well, again, as we started off the conversation, it takes everybody doing their part in understanding where they can have an influence and have an impact. And so it’s been fantastic to get to learn a little bit more about the work that 91��ɫ is doing in this area. And so, Jeff Poapst, Senior Vice President of Manufacturing and Services at 91��ɫ Limited. Jeff, thank you so much for joining us today.

Jeff Poapst:

You’re quite welcome, Tyler.

Tyler Kern:

And everyone, thank you for tuning into this episode. We appreciate it very much. Of course, we’ll be back soon with more from 91��ɫ, but until then, I’ve been your host today, Tyler Kern. Thanks for watching.

 

Tyler Kern:

COVID-19 has prevented us from gathering together for large in-person events, the way that we were used to before the pandemic. In few places, it felt the effects of that more than in houses of worship, where the weekly in-person gatherings are an integral part of their purpose and mission. And today we asked the question, how has COVID-19 changed the house of worship going forward? And joining me to answer that question is Jeremy Bagwell. Jeremy, thank you so much for joining me.

Jeremy Bagwell:

Hey, glad to be here. I’m excited about the conversation.

Tyler Kern:

I am as well. Jeremy is the business development manager for Worship Production at 91��ɫ. And he’s going to be walking through this conversation with us because Jeremy, there is so much to talk about when it comes to this area. But first and foremost, you worked at a large church at the beginning of this pandemic. Can you tell me about that experience. Some of the things you saw, some of the conversations that were taking place at being a part of that church.

Jeremy Bagwell:

Man, it was a fascinating to say the least challenging. I work for North Point Community Church, which is just outside of Atlanta, large multi-campus church. And I remember that day when we had a staff meeting and it was like, “Hey, we’re not going to meet in person.” And then all of a sudden we’re scrambling to figure out what we’re going to do, how we’re going to do it. Originally we’re like, “Oh, we’re a couple of weeks into this and then we’ll be back.” And then as time went on, things quickly changed. I think one of the most challenging parts was just the decision making process.

Jeremy Bagwell:

I mean, for me, I was a production director, making decisions about live production. And then all of a sudden we’re thrust into a position where we’re like, “Maybe we prerecord this thing and we run it on Sunday on the web, maybe we do it live.” And then all the decisions then bubble up to a central place. And so I know my boss was being hit left and right with decisions and we’re waiting on decisions. So just the pace of decision making changed, it was almost like hourly things were changing. So yeah, it was really fascinating. I think every church large and small felt the crunch of like, “What do we do now?” And it’s been fun seeing how it’s played out. People have risen to the occasion and made it work. So does that answer your question? I don’t know.

Tyler Kern:

Yeah. I think so because you’re right in pointing out just the various decisions that had to be made. The decision to, “Are we going to prerecord this or are we going to go live? How are we going to stream?” There were so many decisions to make. How did you walk through that process? And what did that look like for you specifically? Because those conversations I’m sure were difficult conversations to have, and there are positives and negatives on both sides.

Jeremy Bagwell:

Yeah. I think it was… We did it collectively as a team for the most part. And we walked through the pros and cons of like, “Okay, if we’re here on Sunday, do we have volunteers? Do we wear a mask? Do we sanitize?” So many things that we’ve never really had to think through before. We landed at a place where we were like, “Okay, if we can prerecord this thing, but it still feels live, then that’s what we should do.” If it’s live, it needs to be really live and must be a big value for the reason why we do it live on the web. So as we thought through our worship service flow and thought like, “Okay, here’s what we’re doing, here’s a programming.” It made sense to do a pre-record because you could not really tell a difference whether it was live or prerecorded.

Jeremy Bagwell:

So the experience on the other side of the screen was like, “Okay, this is what we do.” Because we’ve been broadcasting on the web for a long time. So it allowed us to really utilize our assets, our people and gear the right way, doing a prerecord. So when we just start laying it all out and ask the question like, “What is the difference if we bring… Because obviously bringing people in on a early Sunday morning during those early COVID times, the intensity is a little ramped up. And you get one shot to get it right. So for us, it’s like, “Okay, well we can take a day, record some songs and record a service and then pass it off to an editor.” And our editors, all of a sudden became very busy. But pass off editor, get it edited, then play it. So it made sense for us to do prerecord for those reasons.

Tyler Kern:

Yes. So that was the decision that you made. And I think it was beneficial that you were already streaming services beforehand, but for a lot of churches, this wasn’t something that was taking place. Or maybe it was, but just on a much, much smaller scale. And then all of a sudden you can’t hold in-person events, and so streaming became a much bigger emphasis for a lot of these churches. What are the challenges in going from not streaming at all, or streaming on a small scale, up to ramping up to your entire production and everything that you do is now streaming and all of your members are now remote. What are some challenges associated with that process for churches?

Jeremy Bagwell:

Oh man. A lot of challenges. So a church right down the road that I grew up at, I know them really well. They didn’t have any cameras, they didn’t have a video switcher. They had really no way of getting it to the web. And so they scrambled real quick and decided from… Thankfully they were financially at a place where they could invest some money, which obviously we’ll start there. Money is a big problem a lot of times. And so they were at a place where they could buy a couple of cameras and a video switcher. Some folks jumped in and we said, “Okay, we can help get you going.” But other churches decided like, “Hey, I’m going to use my iPhone and use Facebook live.” In fact, a lot of churches don’t even stream to their website. They do Facebook live or YouTube live or these free sources.

Jeremy Bagwell:

So, there’s so many churches, a 100 people or less all the way scaling up to 20,000 and so everything in between. And so at the end of the day, it comes to like, “What is your resources? What can you execute?” And in my opinion, what really, really matters is the content, it’s the stuff that people are there to engage with and grow with and be challenged by. So the content really matters. We just want to be able to distribute that content clearly, so there’s no distractions.

Jeremy Bagwell:

So I think every church has to wrestle around with their values. Like, “Okay, what is the value for me? Is it having a great camera shot and all that stuff.” Or is it, “Can I just run it on my phone and be okay with it?” So everybody’s going to land a little bit differently when it comes to that stuff. But yeah, challenges are immense and we don’t even start on lighting because at the end of the day, if you don’t have good light, you don’t have good video. So we’ll just leave that there for now.

Tyler Kern:

That’s a great point. And when I think about COVID-19 and the pandemic and what has gone on over the last year, one of the biggest curiosities and things that I think about I guess is, how have things changed that won’t go back to the way they were before? I think a lot of people wonder that when it comes to the office setting, “Will I ever go back into an office the same way that I did before?” Different questions like that. “Will I ever actually go to the grocery store to buy groceries or will I always have it delivered now?” So I think there are questions about, “Hey, what types of things has the pandemic changed that won’t ever go back to the way they were before?” And I wonder the same thing with houses of worship and with churches. What sorts of things do you think have evolved during this time, or made a necessary adjustment during this time. Maybe now that the cat’s out of the bag, we’re never going to get it back in.

Jeremy Bagwell:

I think streaming online is definitely one of those things, because at the end of the day, you think about the vulnerable folks. The folks that like, “Okay, COVID-19 is a big deal.” And those folks are not going to come attend the in-person service for a long time. And so there’s an expectation now, set with no matter if you’re the 100 person church or the 10,000 person church, that there’s going to be some type of web stream, some type of way to get the church content some way to feel like you’re part of a church body and our membership, that’s going to have to exist for a good long time. I don’t know if it will really ever go away. I think it just… To be honest, pre COVID-19, everybody had some theories about online engagement, had some theories about ways of doing church online. And what is the online church look like.

Jeremy Bagwell:

Well, COVID-19 just thrust us into this experiment and said, “Okay, Hey, we’re going to figure it out. And we’re going to see how it goes.” And I think we’ve learned a lot of things like having a web stream or putting your content on the web matters. And I think people engage with it and it’s going to happen. And I think you’re just going to have to have it, whether it’s five people online or whether it’s a 100,000 people online viewing it. It’s just going to become part of your thing that you do, no matter what size church you are. Which means your budgets change, which means operationally now you have video system that you got to maintain, you’ve got some subscription services you’ve got to deal with. And so, your 2021 budget is different in production now, than it was previously. And then that brings up a whole bunch of decision-making things that whoever the production person is, has to make some of those decisions. But yeah. Does that answer your question?

Tyler Kern:

Yeah. And you took us to an interesting place and that is talking about budgets for 2021, and production directors and people who are in leadership positions, making decisions as far as what decisions do we make with equipment, with software, with technology, things along those lines. How do we evolve with the understanding that online streaming will be a thing forward moving. And I think that these are always tricky conversations to have between church leadership and production directors, because there can be an element of not speaking the same language.

Tyler Kern:

Production director, trying to convey why this is important in church leadership, maybe not understanding terminology and what exactly that person is trying to communicate. I know that’s a circumstance I’ve seen play out in the past. And just wondering if you have any advice for people who are in that circumstance. Production directors who are trying to convey the importance of new equipment, new technology ways that will enable them to better stream online in the future. Any tips for speaking the same language as church leadership and trying to understand one another.

Jeremy Bagwell:

Yeah. It’s a soap box issue for me because I’ve been doing this thing for 14 years in total, I work full time in church production. So I’ve been part of, a lot of these conversations, been privy to dealing with it and also been on the side of asking my boss for a budget and then him going to the leadership. So let’s back up and start from a long time ago. At the end of the day, what was happening is people gathered and took place in teaching and this collective community of a body of believers fellowshipping together. And then as we fast forward, the span of time over the last thousands of years, our societies had developed. And so what once was a church needed low technology, now fast forward in 2021, the church needs high technology to function.

Jeremy Bagwell:

And for me, this is just me, nobody else’s opinion, not of Ross video, none of the churches I’ve ever worked for. But in my opinion, it’s been great to see this advancement of technology in churches, but what hasn’t necessarily also advanced is the… And this is, I mean, there’s some churches that do this well, others that don’t do it well, but thinking through, our church needs technology to survive. I think that’s a really hard thing for a church leadership to wrestle around with because we believe in a higher power anyway. And so when we say, “Hey, we need technology to survive.” That’s a tough pill for them to swallow, but it’s a reality in a lot of ways, because at the end of the day, what is most important is that content and the teaching and the gathering together. And so technology exists to make all that happen.

Jeremy Bagwell:

So when you think about that, you think about, “Okay, so what type of technology do we need to make it happen?” And I think there just has to be real wrestling around with some of the values when it comes to that stuff. Do we want this really awesome broadcast scale gear that doesn’t fail and it works and then it also has a great volunteer experience and we engage volunteers to make it happen? And so when you start wrestle around with those values, then you begin to see it bubbling up. Now here’s how it happened in real life. For me, my production team wrestled around with those values. We came to a place where like, “Here’s what we value.” But the budget didn’t reflect those values. And so what you have to do is then push the conversation up. And it’s not about, we want the best gear, but here’s some of the values of the reasons why we’re making those decisions.

Jeremy Bagwell:

Here’s what we see as church progressing over the past thousand years or so. Here’s what it looks like now. And here’s the ways that we feel like we can utilize our technology. So I think it’s just a mutual conversation that you have and say, “Hey, let’s just deal with what reality is.” And then if the budget’s not there let’s work towards 2022 having the budget. So we realized overnight, you’re not going to come up with another million dollars. Production guys know that, we’re aware of that. So when we asked for things. But leadership loves seeing you make a plan for the future. And so instead of us asking the leadership to make the plan, we say, “Hey, over the next five years, if we can do X amount of dollars per year, sock it away, then we’ll be able to buy the system that we really need three, five years from now or whatever it may be.”

Jeremy Bagwell:

So being able to have those conversations and making sure that you’re on the same insync with the same values is really important. And I think if you can really just help people understand, the migration that we’ve been on from low technology to high technology to make church happen. Yeah, that’s my soap box. At the end of the day, the church production managers are the heroes of our story. Because at the end of the day, we have this Sunday experience and they hold up this incredible thing and message that they feel personally responsible for and it’s their profession. And so there’s this high buy-in, high commitment and yeah, it’s very challenging time. So that’s why I always say those guys are our heroes.

Tyler Kern:

Absolutely. And so Jeremy, take me up to where you are now. So you’re now working at 91��ɫ. How are you still enabling the worship experience, enabling the gathering of houses of worship? But from the other side, now working with 91��ɫ, tell me a little bit about your role now and what you hope to achieve.

Jeremy Bagwell:

Yeah. I am really, really excited. I love 91��ɫ. I was a Ross’ Video user for a long time, part of the reason why I got the job. But business development for us at 91��ɫ. And this is the way I like to phrase it to people is that, I championed the cause of church for Ross, which is not the other way around. At the end of the day, what I felt [inaudible 00:15:23] 14 years with manufacturers sometimes don’t get a worship production market. A lot of times I feel like, “Oh, it’s products and services that are from the news market or from the sports market. And we’re just fitting it into the church market.” So for me, business development at Ross is, “Hey, we want to have products and services and solutions that fit the church market, both price point and functionality.”

Jeremy Bagwell:

We want to be on the forefront of making sure that your volunteer experience is awesome. We want to support you. And we want to help you create the very best services you can. At the end of the day, our products don’t do the creativity again. Our end users, folks sitting around a table in a creative meeting. That’s where creativity comes from. We want to provide live production solutions that maximizes your opportunity for creativity. So I think it’s just… I’m excited because I get to influence those things. I know the conversations I’ve had with our product teams and with our sales teams and ways that we’re able to champion the cause of church for Ross. So I’m really excited about it. I’m looking forward to what the future holds. Yeah. I could talk a long time about that so I can keep going.

Tyler Kern:

Well, I know from previous conversations and previous episodes of this show that Ross has a lot of tools like dashboard and things like that, that can be really, really beneficial in house of worship settings. What types of tools that Ross provide, are you particularly excited about bringing more into the house of worship market that you think will be really beneficial for them?

Jeremy Bagwell:

So this is the way I say it for anybody that… I’m going to give a subtle shout out to my favorite restaurant was the Chick-fil-A. So if you know Chick-fil-A… So here’s what dashboard is to the church market dashboard is what Chick-fil-A sauce is to Chick-fil-A. It is the secret sauce. If you’ve ever had Chick-fil-A sauce, you’re like, “Oh man, that’s good.” So dashboard is that. And dashboard’s free. It’s a control software that allows you to control Ross devices, allows you to control third-party devices. It’s amazing. What I found is a lot of people don’t understand the power of dashboard. Don’t understand what dashboard does, the power of it, and that you for free can be a really powerful dashboard user and really a developer. Developer is a big, heavy word, but at the end of the day, you can do it.

Jeremy Bagwell:

And Ross has a bunch of tutorials. In fact, we just released a series of tutorials that helps you build what I would have wanted. When I was a church production manager, a dashboard panel that controls a whole bunch of different devices. So we released a bunch of tutorials to help you build that panel. So you’ll see over time, we really, really or I personally really want to help create more dashboard [Tinkercad 00:18:22] as I like to call it. So not developers, but Tinkercad. And you’re going to have some incredible stuff come from that. Great ways to make help volunteers control things. Great ways for you to what I say is get out of the ditch when your service goes sideways and something production-wise messes up, you can have a panel that gets switched back to the right source or make sure the recordings are recording and things like that. So, yeah, dashboard is a big initiative of dashboard team’s all about it. And I think you’re going to see some fun stuff come from it.

Tyler Kern:

Well, like Jeremy mentioned, there are a ton of resources on Ross’ videos website, where you can find more tutorials and information about products and that sort of thing. If you want to learn more and also you can just contact Jeremy as well. And I’m sure he’d be happy to walk you through any questions you have Jeremy Bagwell, business development manager of Worship Production at 91��ɫ. Jeremy, thank you so much for joining me today.

Jeremy Bagwell:

Oh man. Thanks for having me. I’m looking forward to what happens. Yeah. And I really look forward to post COVID world too. It’ll be fun getting out and seeing everybody and seeing what we come up with.

Tyler Kern:

It is going to be an exciting time and I can’t wait for that as well. And everyone thank you so much for tuning into this episode. We appreciate it very much. We’ll be back soon with more from Ross’ video, but until then I’ve been your host today. Tyler Kern. Thanks for watching.

tyler Kern:

The ongoing pandemic has affected sports and live events everywhere and Esports has had to adapt as well. A recent example of this is the Drone Champions League, which was converted from a series of in- person league events to an entirely virtual format with both competitors and talent located remotely. The international Esports company ESL partnered with Rocket Surgery Virtual Productions, 91��ɫ’s dedicated virtual production division, to convert the physical in-venue world into an entirely virtual experience. Joining me to talk about this process are three subject matter experts today. First we have Terry Daily, he’s a Senior Designer and Rocket Surgery Virtual Production specialist. Terry, thanks so much for joining us.

Terry Daily:
Yeah, thanks for having us.

tyler Kern:

Absolutely, I’m excited to talk a little bit more about this topic today with you. We also have Bo Cordle. He is a Senior Design and Rocket Surgery Virtual Production specialist as well. Bo, thanks for joining us.

Bo Cordle:
Yeah, thanks Tyler. I appreciate you having us.

tyler Kern:

Absolutely. And then finally we have Simon Eicher he is the Senior Global Manager of Procurement and Executive Producer of special events for ESL Gaming. Simon, thank you for being here as well.

Simon Eicher:
Yeah. Thanks for giving this topic a great platform.

tyler Kern:

Absolutely. Simon is joining us all the way from Cologne, Germany, and so happy to have Simon on with us today. Simon let’s start off here, when the decision was made to move DCL to a virtual experience, when was that decision made? And what were your initial thoughts about how this would work?

Simon Eicher:

Yeah, I think first of all, it’s important to mention, right? Drone Champions League, usually they fly real drones, right? They have had circuits for a few years ongoing across the world already, but luckily they expanded their strategy already late 2019, and released a game which pretty much simulates the real drone racing. So for them, obviously as everyone, 2020 turned out at the beginning to be super painful, but they had this exit solution on just crapping all real drones and, “Hey, let’s just use the game.”

Simon Eicher:

So they reached out to us and basically asked, “Guys, you are the sports experts, right? We need to reinvent now how we actually produce this kind of show. Cause we work together with three classic, big sports entertainment, production companies, but digital storytelling. And the way on how you do that is very different.” We had a lot of brainstorming sessions and basically came to the conclusion, which then turned out to be the final product, let’s simulate everything, right? Let’s not try to create something with multiple pips or other stuff that’s fully transition the venue, which is the game, the commentators, which then also are in the game, to become one and really melted and merged together into what we feel are really good replica in that sense of a real event.

tyler Kern:

So Terry, how did you tackle that challenge of moving everything that was previously in-person right, or a physical world? How did you make all of that digital? Tell me how that process went.

Terry Daily:

Well, sure. One of the things that really worked in our advantage is that DCL- The Game has built in Unreal engine. So we have a product in Voyager, which is our Unreal for broadcast product basically. So it really helps that the game was already developed in that environment. The challenge is we had to take that custom, compiled version of Unreal that is DCL- The Game and make that work in our custom version of Unreal. There was some versioning things, some technical things that had to happen under the hood. We had to work directly with DCL to make sure we were truly representing their product in an accurate way.

Terry Daily:

We looked at it and Simon really taking the lead on telling us what would really work well. We wanted to make this, we didn’t really want to trick anybody, but we wanted to create that sort of environment as if the talent were there in this world. And create something a little more interesting, Simon said, than just putting people in boxes. So after all those technical challenges, we found a pretty efficient pipeline and it was great. It was something that worked really well, I think.

tyler Kern:

Bo, from your perspective, what are some of the biggest challenges when it comes to virtual productions and pulling something like this off? What are the challenges in your mind?

Bo Cordle:

Yeah, in this world normally when we travel for events, we’re sitting next to a rack of gear and, something goes wrong, you just go over and reboot the machine. Luckily we had spent a lot of time back in the spring, developing workflows for remote operations, so that situations like this when Simon calls we’re ready. So when he called with DCL, we had solutions in place and we knew we could pull it off. For this show in particular, the physical Voyager engines were located in a control room in Poland. Terry, working in Texas, I was in South Carolina, we’re back here controlling these machines, installing the new builds, making sure everything works. We’re able to monitor the outputs of the machines with sub- second latencies.

Bo Cordle:

So we’re seeing the output as it’s happening half a world away. For the actual operation during the production, we’re able to build dashboard buttons with Ralph’s dashboard software and configure GPIs so that the technical director in Poland can hit a button on a stream deck or on his switcher and he’s changing the cameras within the Voyager world, or he’s cutting to and starting the camera flies and all the moves that Terry had built in. So it really ended up being a seamless process as though we were there in the Poland control room.

tyler Kern:

That’s really incredible and amazing that you’re able to do that. So Simon, from your perspective, what was it like working with the guys from Rocket Surgery and how did that partnership work? Tell me a little bit about the coordination that had to occur between multiple different teams to make sure everybody was on the same page.

Simon Eicher:

Yeah, sure. First of all, to mention, it’s not the first gig we did together. We did several, I would say probably even from a technical and creative perspective, way more complex shows in the past already. This was a natural reach out to friends in the industry about Voyage being released and having a few new gadgets associated with that we had talked about for a while. So searching for the right application in that sense, when we had the brainstorming with the DCL team together, the rest was the natural by default solution that came up pretty much instantaneously. In Terms of how we wanted to structure everything and how we bring it alive, obviously you always have a very close collaboration and that’s mandatory to be successful in the media industry overall. And again, we were already used to that, I think the chemistry works out very well in terms of contribution overall. Everyone really added to it to make it a success, and that’s then what it turned out to be.

tyler Kern:

So Terry, how do virtual productions compare to more traditional broadcast, like a Sunday night football or something along those lines? Right. Kind of give me some of the similarities, but also some of the primary differences.

Terry Daily:

Well, sure. In the end production is production, and I think we were kind of shocked to see that it felt very similar in reality, aside from being remote and being at home and supporting the show from far away, really the pacing kind of had a similar feel. It is a live sport still, we’re still cutting between cameras. I think there was a little more pressure on our end that all those cameras happen to be within our system. The TDs cutting between sources virtually and in our environment.

Terry Daily:

I think just the added pressure of all that funneling through us and making sure we’re representing everything correctly, maybe that was the biggest difference. I think aside from that, obviously we can control the environment, the imagery can look the way we want it to look. We don’t have to worry about rain and snow and weather. or the most part, we can control that in the game so we can dictate when it’s day or night. I had a lot of fun. I don’t want to say, I don’t have fun doing football, but something like this was really cool and out the ordinary for us. And it was just a cool thing to be a part of it.

Bo Cordle:

If I can just add to that, we are often on a lot of productions where we use Voyager for augmented reality. We have real cameras and real environments, like Sunday night football that you mentioned, which we do, but this was an opportunity to use Voyager to build a talent desk within a game world. There is no real physical camera anywhere they’re all virtual Unreal cameras or Voyager cameras that we can control in UX, which is now Lucid. If Terry wants to put a camera in the sky, he just put a blimp camera up and there it was. Now that TD has access to a blimp camera, we were able to build some shots. For instance, we had one shot that began at the finish gate of the drone race, and then it flies up into the sky to a virtual scoreboard powered by Expression, actually.

Bo Cordle:

And then, after you read the score from that race, then it flies right back down to the talent desk without feeling like you’ve ever left the game world. You get to do some things that you couldn’t do in real life, because if you want a camera you just make one and just throw it in there and control it with UX and Lucid and it just works. You have a lot more flexibility than you do in real life. It was a lot of fun to work on.

tyler Kern:

That’s really incredible. So Simon, do you foresee more events being done this way because of the success of how things went with Drones Champions League and some of the other successful partnerships that you’ve had with the Rocket Surgery guys in the past? Do you think that more and more events could be done this way? And do you think that that could be a trend that we’ll see in the future?

Simon Eicher:

I think it makes sense to a certain degree probably by nature, yeah. You can see obviously currently everyone, due to the pandemic, everyone is seeking virtual solutions to compensate the real world. I think here you really have the advantage that you can use the game, which is somewhat a little bit an isolated element as its own environment in a broadcast to really extend this beyond just being the field of play. Which we actually did here with DCL. Also, I think in terms of other marketing opportunities, there’s a lot to do.

Simon Eicher:

For example, DCL is based in Liechtenstein, were also one of the host cities, basically Liechtenstein was present. Just by nature, the DCL team could give them the visibility that was intended. So there’s a lot of cool new ways in storytelling and it’s both sad, there is no limitation. You can put an unlimited amount of cameras basically anywhere. And also sometimes if you need to turn over maybe amount of talents to envision a higher flexibility, different storytelling, you can do that because basically with a green screen at my back, I can be beamed into any show, any time. So I can have a huge lineup also of content variety in my pipeline that I can ingest into that show, which usually in the past would be very pricey.

tyler Kern:

Simon, given the success of Drone Champions League and how well you guys have done on this project and also your ongoing partnership with the Rocket Surgery guys, do you feel like this could be an ongoing trend? Will you see more events going to a virtual production type style, the way that you did with this event?

Simon Eicher:

I think currently with the pandemic, it’s very natural to have that need of a virtual solutions, virtual environments, but I think especially DCL has the application of expanding the field of play that you have with Esports in general, overall, the whole show, new opportunities. For example, the first event took place in a sponsorship, in a whole city of Liechtenstein where we could, not only during in game as the track was built in the game in Liechtenstein, represent the city but also out of the game in a very natural way. I think there is a lot of great opportunities for advanced storytelling and also then not having physically talent onsite, but putting them into the environment with the green screen which is overall easy to set up basically anywhere. You can also have, maybe, a new amount of variety of talent that is being present. The overall storytelling can be very different compared to maybe a traditional broadcast formats that are currently existing. I think there’s a lot of potential and moving forward. Absolutely.

tyler Kern:

Yeah, Terry I want to bounce off of what Simon just said and direct the question your way, because we’ve talked about all of the different cameras. If you want a camera, you can add a camera, and you can control it in different ways and you can have different types of storytelling with different talent and things like that. Doesn’t that add in just a whole new level of engagement for fans, and provide for a level of engagement you maybe don’t get with traditional broadcasts or with other mediums?

Bo Cordle:

Totally, I think doing these that the demand… We saw the demand increase because of COVID out of necessity, people were having to rethink how they do production. I think now seeing more of these people are maybe going to rethink how they approach these in general, moving forward, maybe not out of necessity anymore because of COVID we might see more of this style of approach moving forward because it presents so many different creative things, like you just mentioned. Where us as a team, I don’t know that we were out seeking this style of production or this product, but now we’re totally rethinking what we do. COVID aside and all of that aside, I think this is something that’s going to be a mainstay and something that people try to do with. With Esports, it just makes sense. Adding that environment, being able to put talent and players, competitors in that world just make sense. Where they can interact with components of the game, that just makes sense. That connection with the audience, it’s just something different that you don’t get with a typical sports production.

tyler Kern:

Yeah, and Bo one of the things I wanted to ask you about was just the explosion we’ve seen really in terms of remote production, across a number of verticals. Speak to just maybe the increased demand for remote production these days mainly brought on by COVID, but you could see how that could be an ongoing trend even in a post COVID world.

Bo Cordle:

Absolutely, and it brings on a lot more… We have a lot more flexibility now with our team, because where before we would have two guys traveling to a game, so they would travel Thursday, be gone until Monday. Well now with the way that we’re able to do remote operations, that we weren’t in the past that same person on our crew is able to do three different events in those three days. We’re logging in to one computer in Connecticut on Saturday morning to do a mainstream show, and then logging into a different computer on Sunday to do a different show. We’re able to have a lot more flexibility and to pull off a lot more events than we ever would have before with the same amount of crew.

tyler Kern:

Yeah, it’s absolutely incredible enough and I’ve loved getting a chance to talk to you guys a little bit more today, about what you did for Drone Champions League, and all the different capabilities that you have utilizing Voyager and the tools that it can provide. Terry, Bo, and Simon, thank you guys so much for joining me here on the video today and chatting about this.