Screens Producing & Media Operations

Advanced Practice for Media Server and Video Content Preparation

Laura Frank

• Publisher: Focal Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429807596
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Media servers have established themselves as the dominant video playback tool for live events; however, the practice of delivering content to these systems and the structure of the media operations team is still evolving.

This book outlines a workflow for video content delivery and describes team communication that can be applied to any entertainment production including: television specials, concert touring, corporate events, theater, as well as special events, film, large audience marketing events, and multi-screen permanent installations. This workflow is hardware and software independent, designed to evolve with future technologies as they become established in the field of multi-screen production, and has been proven professionally by the author and her peers over a decade of productions.

The methodology presented will provide insights beneficial to students and current practitioners of media server technology, screens producers, and video content developers. Using real world examples of internationally recognized productions, a foundation is laid for best practices in Media Operations.

Additional content, including full-color versions of the images inside the book, is available online.

1 WHAT IS A SCREENS PRODUCER? WHAT IS MEDIA OPERATIONS?

What is the role of a Screens Producer in a live production? What is the Media Operations Department all about? Possibly the title “Screens Producer” is new to you, or might fit a role that you’ve already occupied on a show. The Screens Producer role is a relatively new production position, new enough that it is often mis-titled, managed by multiple people across different departments, or missing altogether. There is an ongoing discussion in the entertainment industry as to what a Screens Producer is and what responsibilities belong to a Screens Producer. Once the entertainment industry arrives at a consensus on what defines a Screens Producer, the Media Operations Department will ultimately receive recognition as a stand-alone entity in live event production.

In this book we define the role of the Screens Producer in this way: a single individual who monitors the life of the video pixels from their creation to their delivery on a video screen. The Screens Producer leads the Media Operations Department which is responsible for receipt of these pixels and their playback.

Let’s consider how many people interact with video pixels in a production. Each pixel is both a component of creative expression as well as a complex engineering challenge. Bridging the language and requirements that often separate the disciplines of art and engineering is at the heart of good Screens Producing. The Screens Producer acts as a mediator between video creatives and video engineers to other production disciplines (lighting, art direction, etc.), listening to the needs of each department and helping communication between these teams to reach their goals.

A short list of people who are responsible for interacting with video pixels in a live production includes video content creators, media server programmers, and screen engineers. A larger production will also include creative directors, show producers, animators, content file trackers, media server programmers, media server engineers, screen engineers, broadcast engineers, and so on. Someone must manage all of the information that needs to be communicated between these different entities for the successful display of pixels in a live event. That individual is the Screens Producer.

In a small production, a single person might occupy many or all of the roles described above. Let’s say you are working on a small theatrical event. An Off-Off Broadway production at a 250-seat theater has hired you to be the projection designer. Congratulations! You have been given access to a 10K lumen projector and a laptop and asked to make imagery for the show. You work with the show’s director, set and lighting designers to decide on the video content. Next, you create the content yourself and program video file playback off the laptop connected directly to the projector. Effectively, you own the entire life of the video pixels through the delivery pipeline. You participated in all the creative discussions, tracked and delivered the required content, acted as system engineer, programmer, and ultimately produced everything that appeared on screen in production. Any decisions about the life of those pixels were fully controlled by you.

Now imagine those pixels are part of a nationally televised award show. There will be ten world-famous musical acts performing as well as top movie stars presenting throughout a two-hour live broadcast. The show will have multiple creative decision makers and video content creators, multiple video playback tools, and a whole menagerie of different screen types varying not just by size, but also by resolution. With so many decision makers and points of approval, the screens will not be finalized until a few weeks before the show is on the air and there will only be a few days to manage and program cues for all the video content coming in from multiple sources. There is little time to recover from any mistakes or make sense of unclear information. Communication is key to the success of a good screens workflow, and a Screens Producer must own that communication. The Media Operations team supports the Screens Producer in that communication and manages the content and cue structure during rehearsal and the show. In Figure 1.1, we see a production in progress from the Screen Producer’s point of view, working side by side with a programmer to build screen looks with custom designed video content.

Most live events will fall somewhere in between these two examples. With video already a regular part of most every entertainment production happening today, understanding the process of creating video, organizing and playing video files, and outputting video signals to screen will benefit anyone who intends to work in any part of the video pipeline for live entertainment.

Within the world of live events, video screens and the media played on them are used in different ways. In the music touring industry, screens may be purely artistic design to enhance the mood of the music. In theater, screens are an independent extension of the scenic design, enhancing the physical surfaces as a storytelling tool. For television, the screens may need to act as both eye candy and as informational space. Those familiar with this field may ask, what is the difference between a Screens Producer and a Projection Designer? Or a Screens Producer and a Media Server Programmer?

Figure 1.1 Programmer Kirk Miller at Work on the 2016 Production of Black Girls Rock. Source: set design by Anne Brahic, photo by author

In a theatrical production, the Projection Designer is responsible for the video content creative, video file production, and the cue structure for playback. This role is an equal creative partner to Scenic, Lighting, Sound, and Costume Design, supporting the Director in delivering a cohesive vision of the play or musical to be presented. In live events outside theater or musicals, the role of a Projection Designer is not as common. There are a number of factors that contribute to this reality. Most live events such as television specials and rock tours have multiple content designers and creators, instead of one singular video creative source. Also, as video use outside the theater evolved, media servers and lighting programmers were largely made responsible for driving low resolution LED sources as part of the lighting department. As a result, screens control came under the responsibility of the Lighting Designer. Video content design and video playback control were divided across production departments and have only recently become an independent department.

Figure 1.2 Author Working on the Broadway Production of Shrek the Musical, 2009 Source: photo courtesy of Paul Davila

In the theater, the Projection Designer is a well-established design department head. Outside the theater, the Screens Producer is not necessarily a design lead, but acts as a creative partner to the often multiple content designers involved in a production. In this sense, Screens Producers are editors and creative managers. The Screens Producer is closer to the rehearsal process than the content designers and may be involved in some creative decision making and refinement in rehearsal, but they are typically not the originator of the video creative. However, every production is different. There are live events where the Screens Producer is from a content design team and the Media Operations team is part of the Screens Engineering team. Best practice, however, for a majority of live event projects combines the Screens Producer with the Media Operations team as an independent department that works to facilitate communication between Content Creators and Screens Engineering. In the ten years that have passed since working on Shrek the Musical, I have built a Media Operations team to write and execute the screen cues rather than leave this demanding work in the hands of too small a team (Figure 1.2).

Prior to the Screens Producer role, it was often the responsibility of the Media Server Programmer to provide communication and workflow tools to facilitate communication between the video content creators and the screens engineers. In fact, many productions still rely on Media Server Programmers to provide Screens Producer services. Anyone studying Media Server Programming will benefit from the material covered in this book. The workflow and practices discussed will improve a programmer’s ability to manage multiple responsibilities more efficiently.

In the following chapters we will review the full video content production, playback, and signal delivery pipeline for live entertainment events. We will examine all the roles and team members involved and learn specific methods Screens Producers use to facilitate communication between these groups. We will review how the Media Operations team supports the Content Delivery Workflow. We will analyze various approaches to optimizing the workflow between these groups in different types of production environments using a variety of entertainment technology. And finally, we will look ahead to the future of video for live entertainment production and what this means for anyone tackling the tasks of a Screen Producer. Scenic Design, as with the example shown in Figure 1.3, is continually more dominated by video screens and requires a clear, thoughtful, and well planned workflow for video file delivery.

Figure 1.3 Load In for the CMT Music Awards, 2016 Source: photo by author

TERMINOLOGY

While there is a Glossary provided in Appendix 1 of this book, I recommend researching any unfamiliar terms on the internet. There are many discussion groups on social media, industry magazines online, as well as supporting material available from system manufacturers and rental houses.

2 MEDIA OPERATIONS

Practice & Principles

If you have studied other entertainment production disciplines, such as lighting design or scenic design, you have seen the documentation design teams use to communicate their goals and needs for a production. Scenic designers produce drawings for the scenic company to build the set elements. The scenic design company will further expand that documentation to instruct the carpentry team on site how to assemble the pieces and maintain them long term. The carpentry team will have their own documentation to train new carpenters coming in to learn a show and to ensure that important requirements and tasks are performed on schedule, on budget, and according to design specifications.

The same is true of an audio department, a lighting department, and costume department and so on. From designers to show production personnel to the show operations and maintenance teams, each group has a well-developed set of documentation and production practices that make it easy to move from show to show and understand the culture of the community you are working with and the requirements of a given show. There will always be variations in the way the documentation is presented, but every show has a lighting plot, a microphone schedule, a costume inventory, etc. These are understood and expected communication tools whether you are touring a rock band, making a film, or building a musical.

Live production screens and video scenery have not been around as long as these other practices and therefore our documentation and communication tools have yet to be standardized. We have common terms and technology, but the way these are used can vary significantly from show to show. In addition, technology in the video community is currently advancing quite rapidly and therefore it is a challenge to define a single practice that will apply to any and all video production environments. It is often the case the video production process gets reinvented for each show and therefore time is wasted in re-establishing how even the most common tools and processes will be communicated. More typically, a baseline of communication is not established, and instead assumptions and miscommunications dominate and the video department bogs down in the technical and administrative work debt required to correct the resulting issues.

COMMON COMMUNICATION ISSUES

Here are some common parameters that need to be communicated clearly and then reconfirmed over the course of production.

Video Codec: If the video files are not delivered to the preferred codec of the media server, this can result in all the video files needing to be re-rendered, and significant amounts of time can end up wasted.

Frame Rate: If the video files are the wrong frame rate, playback anomalies can occur. If video is at 25fps and the system is at a refresh rate of 60Hz, the graphics card of your playback system has to create missing frames in real time so that files play out at the correct speed. Sometimes...