Cloud Production | Technical Solutions

We were tasked with delivering a cloud production solution to keep Sky Sports’ live programming on air with presenters and crew working from home. As a result of the pandemic, we had 2 weeks to design, build, and handover a complete solution, including: a new virtual production infrastructure; integrated graphics; post production infrastructure; operational workflow; training, and support.

The Solution:
Instead of taking our broadcast kit out of existing facilities and delivering it to our employees’ homes, we opted for a fully remote virtualised solution that utilised equipment available at home, such as PCs, tablets, mobile phones, as this was the safest option for all of our people.

Within the first week, our Director of Operations & Technical Operations worked with our Technical Management team to test and develop the first version of Sky Virtual Production Suite (VPS), centred around vMix software, to offer live programming created from individual homes.

The following week, we went live with the ‘Cricket Watchalong’, with our Technical Supervisors operating from their sheds and bedrooms. From there, other Sports and flagship shows, including Soccer AM, got involved.

Then the project moved onto producing original programming for different content areas, such as Portrait Artist Of The Week, and supporting other business areas by offering exciting one of kind events for our Sky VIP members.

As programming demand has increased, Sky VPS ‘Live’ (vMix, Singular/Hyper, Bee-On, VizRT, never.no, LiveU), ‘Master Control’ (AWS, Sienna Cloud NDI, SRT Open Source), ‘Streaming’ (Wildmoka) and ‘Automation’ (HP RGS) have been built to form the complete Virtual Production Suite.

The project has expanded across multiple crafts such as Vision Mixers, Sound & Multi-Skilled Operators, and the original team has trained across crafts, supported them through the launch, and helped take on multiple programs a day.