The Kit and Methods Behind Our Festival and Concert Broadcasts

When people picture a festival broadcast they picture cameras. Those matter, but the first thing our crews draw up is the signal path: where each feed starts, how far it travels, what it passes through and where it ends up. A stage camera might sit at the front of house, on a long lens at the back of the field or on a rail beside the pit, and each position has its own distance and cable run.

Daniel Foster, our technical engineer, sketches that path before anyone talks about shot lists. He marks every join, every converter and every point where a feed could be lost. That drawing travels with the crew and is taped inside the gallery, so anyone can see at a glance where a fault is hiding when a picture drops.

It sounds plain, and it is. The value comes from the fact that a calm diagnosis takes seconds when the route is written down, and minutes when it lives in one person's head.

• Every feed has a named start and a named destination
• Cable lengths are noted before the day, not guessed on site
• The path drawing stays visible in the gallery

Outdoor stages are hard on cable. Boots, barrow wheels, damp grass and a long weekend of vibration all take their toll, so we treat cabling as a consumable part of the kit and not an afterthought. Runs are laid along agreed routes, covered where people walk, and lifted clear of standing water wherever the site allows it.

We favour fibre for the long runs between stage and gallery because it shrugs off interference from lighting rigs and generators. Shorter hops stay on coax, with spare lengths coiled and labelled at each end. Connectors are checked and cleaned during setup, since a speck of grit in a plug causes more trouble than most people expect.

Weatherproof housings protect the camera-side junctions, and we carry more spares than seem sensible. They are rarely all needed, but nobody has ever regretted having them.

• Fibre for long runs, coax for short hops
• Covered crossings wherever people will walk
• Labelled spares at both ends of each run

Our mobile gallery is built around a simple idea: operators who are comfortable make fewer mistakes at hour nine. Desks are set at sensible heights, monitors are grouped so the vision mixer sees programme and preview without turning, and the producer has a clear line to every operator through the talkback.

Priya Nair, our lead vision mixer, has strong views on layout. She wants the camera monitors in an arc, the switcher directly in front and the replay and graphics operators close enough to hear a quiet word. Noisy galleries cause missed cues, so we keep the space tidy and the intercom channels sorted by role.

The gallery goes up the same way each time. That repeatability means a crew can step in on a new site and find everything where their hands expect it to be.

• Camera monitors arranged in an arc around the switcher
• Talkback channels split by role, not shared by everyone
• The same layout on every site

A concert is a sequence of moments, and the broadcast has to meet each one. We build a cue sheet for the running order that lists song titles or set changes, the cameras that matter for each, and any graphics or screen content that must appear. It is a working document, marked up in pencil during rehearsal and corrected as the day goes on.

On talkback, the producer calls cues early and in short phrases, so the vision mixer is never surprised. We agree the vocabulary beforehand: a few words that mean the same thing to everyone in the gallery. Chatter is kept off the main channel, and anything not about the next shot waits.

This discipline matters most when something changes. A band cuts a song, a headliner runs late, a screen fails. With a shared language and a clear sheet, the crew adjusts in a breath and the audience never notices.

• Cue sheets marked up during rehearsal
• Short, early calls from the producer
• Side conversations kept off the main channel

Wherever the schedule allows, we run a line check before any audience arrives. Each camera is brought up in turn, each feed is confirmed at the gallery, and the outputs to screens and to any stream are tested against the real destinations. It is a slow, repetitive job, and it is where most problems get found.

Where a soundcheck is on offer, we use it as a dress rehearsal. The camera operators practise their moves against the band, the vision mixer rehearses the pace of cuts, and the replay operator confirms that clips can be pulled quickly. Even twenty minutes of this changes how the first song feels.

Hannah Whitlock, who plans our streaming side, uses the same window to confirm that the encoded stream reaches its platform cleanly. Finding an audio level problem now is far cheaper than finding it with thousands watching.

• Each feed confirmed at the gallery, one by one
• Soundcheck used as a camera and cutting rehearsal
• Stream output tested against the real destination

Live work does not forgive single points of failure, so we plan backups into the design. Critical feeds have a second route where practical, power to the gallery is protected, and recordings run in parallel so that a clean copy exists even if something goes wrong on air.

We also decide in advance what we will do if a camera is lost or a link fails. Which shot replaces it, who tells the producer, how the cut pattern changes. These answers are agreed over a cup of tea before the show, not improvised under pressure.

None of this is glamorous, and most of it is never used. That is the point. A backup that quietly does its job leaves the audience with a good evening and the crew with a calm one.

• Second routes for the feeds that matter most
• Parallel recordings running throughout
• Fallback shots agreed before the show starts