TDious Experiences
volume II: The Remote Broadcast Production Technical Director [Part 1: Mobile Unit Setup]
Ask any 5 Technical Directors (TDs) to describe their role leading up to a live broadcast production and you’ll get anywhere from 5 to 50 different answers. That’s because the role has a number of seemingly dissimilar responsibilities that, in any other occupation, might be split among several different people. For example, a concert pianist generally doesn’t have to tune their own piano, assign the notes to the keys, build the conductor’s podium, compose the transitions from movement to movement, then ultimately play a three hour concerto on that piano nonstop, simultaneously monitoring each note on the piano offline to ensure tonal quality while performing LIVE before an audience of millions!
Actually, that’s probably not the best analogy; a piano only has 88 keys. The world’s most popular Video Production Switcher, the Grass Valley Kayenne panel & K-Frame, has 1,326 buttons (or “keys”), 6 knobs, 4 fader bars and a joystick.
The pianist in this scenario has the luxury of concerning themselves only with their ultimate performance. Everything else is taken care of for them. Not so for a remote TD. If it’s going to be a visual element within the show, it ultimately passes through the TD in one way or another. Video that will be mixed into the production itself must pass through the TD’s video switcher, while other signals, such as video going to monitors in the control room, can pass directly via the router.
The router of a television mobile unit is the signal distribution core for any production. Any video or audio source that is going to be part of the production must exist within the mobile unit’s router. The TD is responsible for ensuring the correct video lands in the appropriate place in production monitor wall, its layout determined by the producer & director, as well as video switcher and all router control points in the control room.
This is the part of the engineering setup that takes the most time to accomplish. The Engineer in Charge (EIC) is the sole manager of the router grid. It is critical that all inputs to the router and outputs from the router be managed by one individual. From there, especially in the IP world of media transport, every department has the ability to manage their own routing needs.
It’s at this point that the TD can finally begin to focus on building out their “piano.” This begins with switcher input & output (I/O) documentation. Traditionally this is generated by the EIC, but with the increased flexibility offered in the IP world, this becomes a joint effort between the EIC, the TD and a dynamic document, such as a shared Google Sheet.
In Part II I’ll delve into the mindset of the TD as they begin laying out sources for the production on the video switcher’s panel, as well as some important things to keep in mind when doing so.
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