Arsenal celebrating success with Blackmagic Design
Arsenal Football Club recently celebrated an FA Cup final victory over Hull City with an open top bus parade through the streets of Islington, North London. “We started dreaming up the production several weeks before the Wembley final,” explains Arsenal Media Group (AMG) production manager Petro Mnych, before adding “we had a whole series of ‘what if’ scenarios should Arsenal win the cup. On the day we had presenter Nigel Mitchell as part of the Arsenal Player show stood on a stage outside the Emirates engaging with the crowds.”
He also rolled in VTs and interacted with presenters from inside AMG’s own television studio as part of a second production. Those split productions had to then be pushed back together as one and fed out online while a return feed was sent back upstairs to a 100sqm LED Screen from ADI parked outside the stadium, and being watched by thousands of fans.
AMG’s OB position had a live production set-up featuring the ATEM 1 M/E Production Studio 4K and 12×12 Smart Videohub 4K router from Blackmagic Design. Four triax HD camera feeds, a single LiveU feed from onboard the bus and aerial shots from Sky’s helicopter were all combined to produce the Arsenal Player.
“Our main product that we delivered was the live video feeds for fans gathering outside the stadium, and our secondary push, which was just as important, was the online stream which was massively important in terms of our digital membership,” said Mynch. “Over the course of the day we had just under 200,000 fans worldwide watching online. And that was in addition to the 25,000 who came out on the Sunday to watch the parade in person.”
“We were lucky in that we had some good hardware from Blackmagic Design, and a fantastic bunch of people working on the production, which meant that we were able to cope with the minor operational issues that arose on the day, without impeding delivery,” concludes Mnych. “Part of that is down to careful planning and ensuring we had a backup procedure in place for everything.”