MixOne Cinema produces its live shows with Blackmagic mixers

MixOne Cinema's multi-camera production of premium live events is produced with ATEM 2 M/E Constellation HD switchers from Blackmagic Design.

The production company led by the director Kevin Garcia has used this technology in productions such as the VetsAid 2022 festival, the Pentatonix presentation at the Hollywood Bowl, the Adam Lambert show at the Hollywood Palladium, the 40th anniversary concert of R.E.M.'s Chronic Town, among others.

“The main factor of this team that has been a great advantage is the departure availability and the power assign isolated camera signals to different locations. This has been very useful when mixing for image enlargement and capturing content and transmitting it over the Internet simultaneously from the mixer," García observes. "In addition, at each event I used the USB port as a backup connected to the computer equipment in case something went wrong."

“Las integrated Fairlight audio tools They were also very useful. During Lamb of God's show at the Aftershock festival, there were no microphones for the audience. I ended up using camera audio captured between songs and adding fades from the unit at the edge of the stage. “This really helped incorporate the energy of ‘live’ performances that we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to incorporate.”

Dynamic projects

According to García, his projects are extremely dynamic, especially when they are live, and the possibility of control everything in a subtle and agile way It was a great advantage.

“Filming Pentatonix at the Hollywood Bowl was carried out with 12 cameras, with the farthest of them located more than 1,000 feet away,” he explains. "With the ATEM 2 M/E, it was very easy to control all 12 units and have clear communication between them, as we also took advantage of the camera control functionality through the Blackmagic Camera Fiber Converter and Blackmagic Studio Fiber Converter devices. Pentatonix is ​​a unique band in that it has five lead singers, so we always have extra cameras. We also wanted to show the magnitude of the Hollywood Bowl."

In addition to the ATEM 2 M/E Constellation HD mixer, MixOne Cinema recently added a HyperDeck Studio 4K Pro recorder to its workflow, which also includes several cameras Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12K, URSA Broadcast G2, Pocket Cinema Camera, monitors Video Assist and devices ATEM 1 M/E Advanced Panel 10, among other products.

“The possibility of using SSD drives or SD cards with the HyperDeck Studio 4K Pro model helps us a lot,” says García. “Some of the streams we do are one or two hours late, so it's a big benefit to be able to record in H.264 when we don't have time to encode the material.”

“Sometimes we have a calendar of events one after the other and, in addition to this, we are increasingly asked to incorporate the live Internet broadcast component,” he says. "For Evanescence's show at the Louder Than Life festival, we had an hour to set up the entire broadcast for the special event on the DWPresents channel on Twitch. The day after Pentatonix's show at the Hollywood Bowl, we found ourselves on the other side of the country with an ATEM 2 M/E mixer, an Advanced Panel device and several cameras to broadcast a Q&A session on Long Island on Kelly Ripa's book tour with the audience in attendance."

García concludes by assuring that “the ease of use of all Blackmagic Design equipment helped us configure practically any type of system in a very short time.”