Tyred and exhausted: How Formula E reinvented the sound of motorsports
Inside the Gravity Media Production Centre in White City, London, during the live broadcast of the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship race in Mexico City on 14 January
Gravity Media’s new Production Centre located in the heart of White City, London, got off the starting grid this year with a live broadcast of the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship race in Mexico City on 14 January.
In the slipstream of the Formula E’s groundbreaking ethos, Gravity’s approach to live broadcast taps directly into the same spirit with a full remote audio mix which not only saves time and money, but also encourages creativity in a way that simply isn’t possible on location.
The 2023 Formula E season is streets ahead of the competition. With motorsport heavyweight McLaren joining the team, and Maserati returning to single-seater world championship racing for the first time since 1957, this season’s Formula E championship has swelled to 11 teams, introduced new race locations and debuted its faster, lighter and more powerful GEN3 cars.
The championship is a big-ticket item and was the perfect event to showcase Gravity Media’s brand new 50,000 square foot Production Centre. Located in the historic Westworks building, the facility is designed to support both on-prem and remote production workflows with a full SMPTE 2110 IP infrastructure.
Formula E is the Production Centre’s first podium client and gave it the opportunity to hit the ground running, connecting its six production and audio control rooms, seven flexi control rooms, multiple off-tube commentary booths and two studio spaces with crews on the ground in Hyderabad, India for the round four race on 11 February.
Reinventing the (driving) wheel
It also gave them the opportunity to reinvent how motor sport is covered, and how it sounds. Gravity’s head of audio, TJ Nancarrow, should know; he has been covering motor sports for the last seven years.
“Even though the drivers are racing for different teams, they are all in this together and the Drivers Room is a place they can go after the race to watch replays and key moments in an informal environment. We mic this area up with some Sennheiser 416s to gives us the ability to capture the chatter and opinions between the racers”
After a ten year stint with Australia’s Nine Networks, his passion for travel got the better of him and a move to the UK led to a job with UK facilities house Gearhouse, now Gravity Media.
“Gearhouse gave me the opportunity to work on a variety of outside broadcasts,” he says. “I was fortunate enough to travel all over the world on Sky’s F1 coverage, which definitely got that travel bug out of my system, as well as ATP 1000 and grand slam tennis competitions. I learned a lot and loved the life, but I must admit the new Westworks Production Centre is a welcome change from seeing all those lovely car parks!”
The audio approach on Formula E is unlike anything Nancarrow experienced with F1. The range of mic inputs is vast with over 80 sources to play with, and a working culture which encourages collaboration and access provides options he has never had before.
In keeping with Formula E’s green ethos to minimise costs and environmental impact, Gravity’s on-location equipment is minimal, with most of the heavy lifting done remotely in the studio at Westworks.
Gravity Media’s head of audio, TJ Nancarrow
Two pods are better than one
Nancarrow comments on the set up between the racetracks and Westworks: “There are two custom-designed pods which travel with the crew: one MCR pod which houses all the on-site vision kit like the CCUs and IP routing fabric for video, and one audio pod. The audio pod has a Calrec Summa console, 2 x 128-port RTS intercom racks, 2 x modular I/O racks and a Calrec RP1 for in-ear monitor feeds, as well as all the Wisycom rackmount kit for all the RF.
“There are two Ferrofish A32pro Dante units in the audio pod, as well as four in the MCR pod which provide us with all of the analogue IO for the CCU’s comms, and another three out in the field. Two of these are used in our RF racks to give the UHF a Dante interface into the network, and we have another situated in the TOC which handles any onsite rights holder audio feed distribution.
“The Dante network onsite is pretty tasty. Across the two modular I/O frames we have six Dante cards, four of which are managed within Gravity’s network. These four cards give us 256 channels of I/O between the console core, our RTS Omeno comms network and other external Dante devices. The other two Dante cards are members of other onsite Dante networks; one is the MRTC network which allows us to pick all of the team radio comms, the other is for ADI’s network which provides all of the trackside big screen entertainment.
“In addition to the console everything packs down into three 30u racks.”
Creating a wider soundscape
But the small package does not tell the whole story. In fact, it gives the production crew scope to tell more stories than ever before, with a wide range of microphones providing access to previously hidden corners of the racing community.
Nancarrow explains: “We have 24 Sony line cameras located around the track, each with a stereo mic embedded on the camera head. We also have 10 Dante mic pre-amps which the ground crew will select on a race-by-race basis to associate with a particular camera. From an audio perspective it gives the camera a much wider area to capture the approach and the follow through, which emphasises the stereo image of the car passing the camera and gives the whole treatment a wider perspective.
“We have 10 of Gravity’s own mini-cams situated around the track in various locations, which use CTP System’s RMA 400 mic pres to embed their audio sources onto SDI signals, and we have a minicam stationed in every single team garage with an embedded mic to capture the ambient effects from the garage.”
While onboard cameras are commonplace in modern motorsports, each car on the circuit has 10 of them as well as two mics; one on the plank and one on the X Wing. The production also has two beauty cameras on each track, each with associated audio, providing a wide angle shot of the racetrack, as well as additional mics positioned in the pit lane. Finally, the production also monitors the team radio conversation to give viewers the inside track on what the teams are discussing at any point in the race.
Storytelling enrichment
From the 2022 season, Formula E introduced a brand-new element to enrich viewers’ experience of Formula E, with exclusive access to the Driver’s Room.
“Even though the drivers are racing for different teams, they are all in this together and the Drivers Room is a place they can go after the race to watch replays and key moments in an informal environment. We mic this area up with some Sennheiser 416s to gives us the ability to capture the chatter and opinions between the racers. It gives the viewers a unique perspective and adds another dimension to the narrative,” says Nancarrow.
“Formula E has an energy which I haven’t experienced before. Everyone is in it together; there is no exclusion between the different members of the team, the drivers and the teams all eat together with the broadcasters”
The on-site Summa console creates a mix of the race which is comprised of all the trackside mics to provide a bed which underpins the whole production. This is sent back to Westworks as a complete mix and all the other mic sources and audio feeds arrive as individual inputs where they are treated and reassociated with the pictures.
These stems go to replays and for archiving, and added to the track mix to create the international mix which is picked up by over 40 international rightsholding broadcasters. All of this is produced at Westworks in London.
Nancarrow adds: “We use Unity Connect for audio backhaul to the studio; we have two Unity Connect servers on location which connect to Unity Servers in London. The latency is ultra-low, and we find it’s the best way to send programme submixes to the on-location presenters. Because all the content is produced and added to the programme here in London, we have to get those mixes back out in a timely fashion to feed into the presenters’ IEMs.”
Presenter mix-minus feeds for the home presentation are all processed on location using an RP1 processing core, but these too are controlled at Westworks in London in a separate gallery.
Remote production and the creative process
“Remote production gives us the ability to try things which we would never be able to do on a standard OB,” comments Nancarrow. “We don’t have to derig at the end of every race which means that in-between races we have a stable environment to experiment, and an environment that is race-ready. It allows us to try equipment from different manufacturers, explore new ways of working, try out new plugins, new software and new firmware; it gives us more creative flexibility.
“When you are site and have spent two weeks rigging, and are about to go on air for the next two weeks, you don’t want to be the first to try something outside of the box! Gravity’s Westworks facility gives us the perfect environment to do exactly that, and as the tour continues, we will tweak and adapt – every week we find opportunities to do things differently and everyone is included in those discussions both on site and at the production hub.”
In fact, this inclusivity is the key to Formula E’s success. For all the mic sources, camera feeds, experimentation and access, what really sets Formula E apart from other motor sports is the culture.
“Formula E has an energy which I haven’t experienced before,” says Nancarrow. “Everyone is in it together; there is no exclusion between the different members of the team, the drivers and the teams all eat together with the broadcasters. You can be eating lunch and one of the drivers will be sat opposite. There is no us and them, and that is unique for a competition of this nature.
“To feel like everyone is on a level playing field is a great way to work, but more importantly it allows us more creativity to build a more involving soundstage. Compared with F1 we have an incredible range of sources to be creative with when we build the mix in London, it’s like being a kid in a sweetie shop!
“It’s like when you are playing a video game as a driver; the viewer feels like they are part of the action rather than a spectator, and the technology we have available makes it feels like the start of something very new.”
Formula E is back in Berlin on 23 April for all-electric racing’s ninth visit to the German capital as the drivers race the tough Tempelhof Airport circuit.