British Cycling National Circuit Series Coverage
Date: 2022-05-14 Category: Portfolio Location: Various, UK
Project
Cycling production company, Cyclevox were commissioned to produce exclusive coverage of the British Cycling National Circuit Series. A nine week series of city road races across the UK. Each event was live streamed across social media, with remote studio commentary, live interviews and on-site presenting. Limitless came aboard as Cyclevox's technical provider, offering studio, MCR, live links for cameras and 4G remote infrastructure.
Mission
For 2019, British Cycling wanted to live stream the entire 9 race National Circuit Series. Each road race was hosted in a different town or city throughout the UK and lasted 9 weeks. The solution had to be robust, flexible, and sustainable so Cyclevox turned to long-term supplier Limitless Broadcast to deliver a remote production first.
Using Limitless' remote production resources in Surrey, the team were able to broadcast each of the nine events live. Leveraging the 4G network, the remote team were able to turn up on site and “go live” without needing an OB truck or any broadcast infrastructure at the event. The ability to “untether” and allow camera operators to roam freely streamlined the camera plan and crew, as one camera can move from one area to another. The presenting team could do the following without needing to worry about RF range or cabling; visit the pits, fan zones, start line and VIP areas, shoot interviews, live links and gather additional shots. They had the freedom to roam.
Impact
Limitless provided between five and seven LiveU units; one fitted to a motorbike which followed the action from the front of the race. Another LiveU was used with the presenting team to feed back interviews, live links and additional content which was either shown live or recorded into EVS for later use. Further units were supplied for cameras at the start/finish and specific corners or positions around the circuit. A final unit was used at the Surrey MCR for uplinking to social media. Limitless' LiveU servers were bringing the feeds from each remote camera into the live gallery where vision and sound was mixed. Live graphics and slow-mo replay were overlaid before the stream was sent for distribution.
Our Surrey studios provided the location for in-vision presenting and commentary. Communications were supplied between the presenter on location and studio team in Surrey to allow live handovers and real-time chat between the two locations.
Benefits
Each event although geographically in a different location, had the same setup configured back at base, with the same team operating the gallery.
This enabled consistency between each event from a proven location, with pre-tested infrastructure. The permanent MCR has better connectivity, with backup services, increased crew welfare and redundancy. Production crew aren't travelling away from home and so there is a large saving on transport, accommodation and expenses. The environmental saving from not sending fully-kitted OB trucks out to each location along with a large crew, was an additional bonus.
