With host broadcaster, France Télévisions, Gravity Media worked on this year’s Tour de France as technical services supplier.
On the relationship between Gravity Media and France Télévisions on the Tour de France, Rudy Dendleux, managing director at Gravity Media France, says: “Our purpose at Gravity Media is to give them the best tools and the best conditions for them to shoot what they want to shoot, to inspire the audience, and how they want to feel and catch the spirit of the Tour de France. So this is our duty at Gravity Media, to give France Télévisions the most powerful tools to get the best coverage possible.”
Innovation on mix minus
This year Gravity Media provided a new innovation for France Télévisions, the journalists working from the back of motorbikes, and all other rights holders across TV and radio, as part of an ongoing trial of proprietary technology, with a tweak to mix minus audio technology.
Mix minus audio feeds typically refer to a clean feed that excludes a specific source or commentator. In the case of Gravity Media’s proprietary technology, this is that same concept, but it allows the reporter on site to hear and see what is happening back in the studio live, without having to rely on the relay planes for RF transmission, and also allowing a clear and consistent feed that does not suffer from RF signal interference either.
Says Dendleux: “From an innovation point of view, this year as a trial we experimented with another way of providing the mix minus audio and the return programme video of the race. This is the audio that the journalist receives from the TV set that they are connected with [on site]. So it’s all the audience within the TV set except their own voice, because if they hear themselves, they cannot understand [what is going on in the studio] anymore. This is called mix minus.”
On why it is important for reporters to have this kind of talkback technology, Dendleux says: “Because they need guidance. They need to know when they are on air or not, and they have real conversations and discussions with the audience and the [studio]. It’s live, so they need to understand when they are live and when they need to talk and what is the subject of the conversation on the TV set, just to [be able to appropriately] react and to [be able to] add something relevant to the conversation regarding what they are currently seeing on site.”
On why Gravity Media decided to create this innovation, Dendleux explains: “We wanted to improve the quality and the efficiency of audio. It’s an inhouse technology [which means] we don’t need the fixed wing relay anymore. On the global coverage, over the race, we have two fixed wings that are acting as a relay,” he notes, which are used for the cameras on the ground, as well as two helicopters filming the action. “When the fixed wings are not on site, you are losing the connection with the race.
“The problem is that sometimes the audio quality was very poor because with all the RF that we use; sometimes you get a lot of interference. If you don’t have any interference on one stage, maybe on the other one you can get interference because you are close to the border or whatever.
“So this year regarding the mix minus and the return programme video, just to give you an example, some journalists on the motorbikes now, they want to see the live pictures so we used this new inhouse technology as a trial this year.”
This means that reporters on site could get the audio quality required without the latency this can create, particularly in areas of congested RF or with poor overall connectivity. Comments Dendleux: “This is something that we need to compete against, because the more quality you have [in the audio talkback], the more delay you get. So this is also a reason why we are introducing a brand new technology [in this area].”
This technology has been trialled at several live sports events, with the Tour de France being the final test. Now those internal tests are over, it will be available commercially next year.
On coming to the end of the trial period, Dendleux says: “We are close to the end because we did a lot of other trials, but in each case it was only for internal use, not to give to external customers. So we did a lot of internal tests on real events, but now it’s almost at a commercial point of view.”
Production challenges
The production challenge for this year’s Tour de France for Gravity Media came with the race starting in Barcelona, before crossing the border into France over the course of stage three. For Gravity Media, the planning process then required extra negotiations for frequencies and air space to use during the broadcast.
“Starting with a Grand Départ from abroad is a big challenge from a logistical technical point of view, because logistically it is far away from our headquarters and from our technical hub,” says Dendleux. “So we need to have frequency coordination made between the different countries. When you have three stages in a foreign country for the very, very early stages, it’s something that you need to be very careful with. So from a technical point of view, it’s even more difficult than starting from Lille as of last year.”
Gravity Media had a lot of trucks on site over the course of the race. The key ones for the production were those focused on the feeds from the many RF-connected cameras on site, from helicopters to motorbikes.
Says Dendleux: “For Gravity, we have four trucks involved just for RF because we have other customers [other than the host broadcast for France TV] and other tasks to achieve on the Tour de France. But for Gravity Media’s RF parts that we are doing for France Télévisions, we have four trucks involved: one truck at the finish lane, three trucks acting as intermediate points when they receive the signal from the fixed wing relay, two shooting helicopters, six video motorbikes and eight journalist motorbikes.”
He continues: “The truck on the finish line is our biggest one. It’s not the truck where the TV director is because the TV director is inside another truck which is a France Télévisions truck. We are retrieving all the RF feeds and we are ending that back to France Télévisions and they are mixing that with the fibre cameras on the finish line as well, so this is where the TV director is; not inside our truck.
“The receiving truck [at the finish line of each stage] is let’s say midsize, because they need to be smaller – four wheels – because sometimes a good place to receive the feeds from the race is not on, let’s say, ‘steady’ roads. So they need to be a mid size or a small size truck. It depends on the country that where we’re coming from.”
The RF-focused trucks for the world feed moved to their next stage positions overnight. Says Dendleux: “Sometimes if we are lucky we can stay two days at the same place at for the finish line, but it’s doesn’t happen very often, so it’s very rare. But we’re moving overnight and we are doing, let’s say, surveys over four to five months just to identify where we’re going to put our trucks for the intermediate points. We need to be sure that it’s a place that will get the most powerful coverage, and we need to get the authorisation from the owners of the place where we want to park our truck as well. So it takes from four to up to five months of surveys [to complete] all the logistics process that we need to go through.”
Each of the two helicopters used to aerially capture shots of the race used two cameras with stabilised gimbal heads, controlled by an operator inside the helicopter.
Says Dendleux: “We have on large lens on one gimbal and the other is for long lens shots. On each helicopter, we have two gimbals so they can shoot almost from everywhere to everywhere.
“The camera operator is based within the helicopter so there is no delay, so he can act directly on what he needs to do. Don’t forget that there is also a pilot within the helicopter, and they are working in tandem [with the camera operator]. Every picture that you can see from them is dual work; it’s a cooperation between the pilot and the camera operator. If the pilot doesn’t know anything about shooting pictures and television, you would get what you get!”
Dendleux concludes on that relationship: “It’s the same thing on the video motorbikes. So the motorbike drivers need to know the cycling and where they are allowed to drive regarding the race. They are watched by the entire world and if they do something wrong, they can get a slap within two seconds!”
