Back in November, our Engineering Group was asked to provide coverage of a market event happening at our university. We had already decided our Roles for the big 'Rave-live' project later in the year, where we broadcast of Freeview for a few days. My Role is head of Lines, basically managing the connectivity all around the uni, making sure cabling is up to scratch, and that all cameras have sync.
Having been an assistant to this role last year, I felt comfortable with what I had to accomplish.
I was given a £500 budget to buy cable, tape and any other tools we might need throughout the event.
This was quite a difficult budget to manage, and would have been so easy to go over with, as I had to balance quantity of stuff with quality of stuff! Couldn't just buy the cheapest there is, otherwise it wouldn't have worked!
However I did make a few mistakes when ordering things online. I brought what I believed to be XLR cabling, which is what the picture sure looked like, only it turned out to be very thin balanced microphone cabling, not quite what I thought! I also underestimated how many BNC connectors we would go through, having brought about a hundred, and in the end having to use some I had reserved for Rave-Live!
It was also my job to work out where cameras would be positioned, and how they would connect to the uni's infrastructure. We have wallboxes at various points throughout the uni, unfortunately they never seem to be where you need them most! After some juggling about we worked out where the cameras would go, and how to get the sync and signal to and from them. We have a Black and Burst DA in our CAR, and some of the wallboxes have B&B straight to them, meaning getting sync to the cameras wasn't an issue as long as we had the correct cables of the correct length!
During the event, a few problems ensued.
Even after testing all our cables, some broke between the time they were tested, and event day. This taught me that I need to test a few times, and make sure the connectors aren't too dodgy.
On the ground floor, the management team wanted cameras roaming throughout the market. However in our welcome space, the only wallboxes are in the floor, and most of them were under market stalls. We warned the management team they would need at least 3-4 cable bashers, otherwise it wouldn't be safe, but they turned up with a cameraman and one assistant each. This meant we could only have one roaming camera, as the cables trailing over the floor needed to have people attending them, otherwise innocent market people could easily have fallen over and hurt themselves. Roaming cameras are going to be something we need to watch out for in other events, especially in that area.
All-in-all the market went really well. And after the first day full of teething problems our coverage was excellent.
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