Welcome to Live Production Month at RedShark

RedShark will be running themes each month, and we're beginning with Live Production.

This is RedShark’s 10th year and in every one of those years we have been asked by manufacturers if we can do “monthly themes”. The truth is we’ve always wanted to - the benefits are obvious. Without the constraints of a release focused news cycle which is naturally reactive, we can create and commission deeper, more thoughtful pieces on a topic that can interest anyone from beginners looking to try and move into something new, to experts that appreciate deeper analysis and comment on a topic they care deeply about. It does involve a lot of forward planning and support, something I’m pleased to say we’ve got in place now.

We want to cover a wide gamut of topics such as audio, cinematography, virtual production, VFX and even storage (not sexy on the face of it but absolutely essential). However we’ve started with Live Production. Why? Because it’s really, really hard! In a “normal” world we’d head off to a show like NAB with plans on streaming a live show from the Las Vegas Convention Centre. Top guests talking about the technology they’ve seen that day and what impact it’ll have on the industry with a live, interactive element that allows you to ask questions and comment in real time. Cool idea right?

However we’ve never actually done it as there are so many potential points of failure. It needs to look right, sound perfect *and* be done in a way that we can stream it reliably from a location with notoriously patchy WiFi and cell phone signal. You guys are video professionals so streaming a substandard show to you was out of the question; so instead we shot our videos, fixed errors on set or in post and uploaded the shiny, polished version to YouTube/ Facebook.

So this month you’ll see reviews of live production technology, video content on how to set up a (reliable) live production, deeper dives into areas of the industry that drive the innovation we’ve seen in the sector like Sports, Music and News and some opinion on where the technology is heading and how best to use it in a way that suits you. We’re adding a tab at the top of the homepage that’ll be home to all our Live Production content in case you want to binge on all the articles.

If you’ve got an idea or would like to contribute, our editor Simon would love to hear from you via editorial@redsharknews.com.