In late 2020 after the Covid lockdowns, things were beginning to return to normal, but large events were still not an option. The high street chain Boots therefore decided to do their Christmas product launch in the style of a magazine format rather than a large in person event. Kinura provided the technical support for the project, from streaming, to audio, camera equipment and crew, comms, lighting and graphics.
The set was large and comprised of four main areas, the living room, bedroom, the make-up and wellness zones. The presenting team of Davina McCall and Yinka Bokinni were to utilise the different sets to discuss and demonstrate the products and conduct interviews with in person and remote contributors.
The above all sounds so simple, but it had to be done seamlessly and it had to look indistinguishable from a high end daytime show, like ITV’s This Morning. It was going to require a bigger, more complex setup than other live streams.
First there was the set build, then there were multiple cameras, some of which were fixed, others that moved between the sets. There were graphics, holding slides, countdowns and music. All the presenters and interviewees were mic’d and Davina was given an earpiece for talkback and for conducting the remote interview. Then we had to rehearse it all.
Some segments were pre-recorded the morning before and played out as live during the broadcast to give the cameras time to relocate to different sets and make the transitions between the segments as smooth as possible.
I was situated next to the vison mixer, running two Wisycom Shark Fin antennas to make sure I had maximum signal strength wherever the radio mics were in the studio. I mixed all the radios and audio inputs and sent presenter comms through a Sound Devices 888 mixer/recorder and mixed them using ICON Platform M+ mixing surface.
The broadcast was a huge success and Boots returned to the format in 2021 where we applied our learnings from the previous year. The 2022 Christmas Product launch was a return to the traditional in person event, leaving the Christmas Unwrapped format a novel approach to a very Covid question of how to promote your brand and products at time when people couldn’t gather.
Audio Vox has been working with Kinura for almost ten years. Their dedication to creating the best live streams always means pushing the boundaries of what is expected. A good live stream should be produced like TV, it should be slick and seamless and this is what they bring this to every job, whether internal or external. It’s a service they can provide on location or from their central London studio.
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