3Cat takes cinematographic broadcast one step further: Cinema Live amazes during the visit of León XIV

3Cat bet on the application of workflow Cinema Live with cinematographic solutions Sony y Fujifilm in one of the central events of Pope Leo XIV's visit to Barcelona: the light and music show that put the finishing touch to the ceremony of blessing the tower of Jesus of the Sagrada Família.

He cinematographic broadcast has been accompanying the global broadcast industry for the last few years. With an audience that is increasingly demanding with the visual quality of the content and facing a fierce competition On the part of on-demand platforms, the spectacular nature of the image has become a key tool to capture the viewer's attention.

The introduction of look cine with independent cameras in sports broadcasts, performing classical concerts or recording the last performance of the musical Mar and Cel (3Cat) They represent a change in trend. This aesthetic is no longer only limited to its fiction and documentary environments: it can be part of broadcasts in straight and traditionally broadcast content.

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One more step for film broadcast

In this first stage of a visual approach that who knows if it will be consolidated in the medium term, this creative commitment is not alien to the coordinates that accompany broadcast environments. The puzzle goes through integrate capture techniques and solutions belonging to another world in the usual workflows of the environment broadcast, enriching them without needing to change the structure or work profiles.

This adaptation, which is part of the joint effort of manufacturers and the technical and creative teams of broadcasters, continues exploring your limits. Like any other technological adaptation process, different trials are accompanied by implementations that are ways of involuntary R&D, while challenges emerge that could only be put on the table by manifesting themselves on the ground.

Even with the conceptual and technological efforts necessary to introduce this aesthetic in a recurring, coherent and profitable way in modern production environments, the 3Cat team upped the ante by promoting a live broadcast uniting both worlds. The world, therefore, looked closely: if the ten minutes The duration of the show at the Sagrada Família were carried out successfully, the Catalan broadcaster would occupy the center of attention of the global industry.

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The Sagrada Família show, at Cinema Live

When the end of the Tower of Jesus of the Sagrada Familia with the visit of Pope Leo XIV, the Catalan artistic director Igor Cortadellas was commissioned to build a light and music show, with elements of videomapping and drones. To communicate it to the world, the director of Image of TV3 (3Cat), and director Paulí Subirà Claramunt, studied how to translate his creative message and translate it to the screen.

Despite the complexity of the challenge, and based on the experience of Mar and Cel, Subirà ended up opting for a cinematic aesthetics live supported by the talent of the house: a creative team made up of Domènec Gibert (AEC) and Xavi Bonet, director of photography and head of post-production for Imagen, respectively. The colorist Eva Parra and the broadcast engineers of the Technical Department (IDT), Francesc Salinero, Diego Fuentes and Toni Bravo, completed a team of top-level professionals in both artistic and engineering disciplines. "In a project of this magnitude it is clear that the technical and artistic part have to go hand in hand. Gaudi said "First l'Amor després la Tècnica": this phrase summarizes the soul of the project. We wanted to use technology to show what Gaudi did with so much love and devotion," he comments. will go up.

To complete the project, he established contacts with all types of agents in the creative and technological industry. Strategic international suppliers such as Sony y Fujifilm provided film cameras and lenses, while the French production services company PhotoCine Live She was in charge of field support with the show's mobile unit (OB3). The management of the Project (Production Technical Manager) was entrusted to the British consultant Hector Sole-Bradshaw Beltran, with experience in international events and UHD-HDR workflows.

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From a UHD broadcast to a Cinema Live model

The entire 3Cat operation in the Sagrada Família was designed in UHD-HDR to be available exclusively through the YouTube from 3Cat, with versions in SDR Coming soon both on the platform and in TDT by TV3. To make this vision a reality, and adapt it to cinematographic models, Solé-Bradshaw was clear that it was necessary to establish a “very pragmatic and solid” broadcast technology base, similar to that used with other international sporting events.

“We decided to deploy a single-master HDR-HLG in mode closed-loop shading, which allows camera control technicians to view an SDR through a downstream LUT; Being an international distribution program, it opted for the transformations of the BBC. This model has been tested in most international productions, it works and it is what we decided to maintain,” he comments, before delving into the true production variable: the choice of cinematographic cameras and cinema optics versus traditionally broadcast capture solutions.

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Limitations and opportunities in catchment design

Traditional broadcast cameras are characterized by their versatility. If the Sagrada Família event had been broadcast with this model, the units could have been located in more distant positions, played with the zoom itself and adapted with greater flexibility to the lighting variables of the show.

The model of cinematographic broadcast implies a completely different philosophy that was transferred from the beginning of the project to all the links of the production: "It was essential to propose a constant dialogue at the level of light both in pre-production, recording and live. You no longer have the flexibility to change color temperatures or apertures, but you are linked to a look previously defined”.

This definition of the aesthetics of the production, deeply linked to the content of the event designed by Igor Cortadellas, implied the need to carry out camera tests with all the elements thereof, which preceded “creative discussions” in depth: “In this area, the most different part is that the look "Not only is it created in camera control, but there is an intermediate aesthetic that helps unify the entire work following the objectives of the creative director and the director of the production."

This planning extended to the choice of cameras, lenses and their placement. The optical characteristics of the sensors of cinema cameras are found closely linked to the choice of lenses to achieve a specific result. With the necessary planning, the camera operator can change lens and be prepared to offer a different point of view. However, hardly a single lens will be able to cover from an angular shot to a tight zoom, For example.

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PhotoCineLive, Sony y Fujinon: partners key to production

In March of this same year, Solé-Bradshaw had a conversation with executives of Sony Americas to learn about the technical complexity of the Super Bowl. “They have called me because they want to do something like the Super Bowl in Barcelona for the Sagrada Familia.” The answer was simple: “You are crazy, you don't have time.”

The interaction shows the complexity of a project that began with the incorporation of a mobile unit made up of the French PhotoCineLive, possibly one of the European companies with the largest number of cinema cameras and optics integrated into a production vehicle. At the capture level, ten cameras were deployed Venice 2, seven cameras FR7, three gimbals with the FX6 and various solutions PTZ. From the optics point of view, Fujifilm's Duvo family was available: the type lens box con zoom Duvo 25-1000, portable zoom 24-300 and the 14-100 model.

These solutions fed the live offering shots from “very privileged” angles, using cranes, systems stabilization and all types of positions that ranged from adjacent buildings to images captured by a drone DJI X9. All signals were transported via fiber SMPTE up to one Stage Box, connected to the mobile unit using the solution StageRacer of Ereca with the necessary redundancy for this type of production. Just one steadycam, responsible for performing horseshoe movements to capture Leo XIV's reaction, resorted to a RF connection with the production vehicle.

The broadcast also included previously recorded fragments that served to present for the first time the interior of the Cruise room, again signed with cinematographic solutions. The show can be seen on demand on the 3Cat portal.

The great technological deployment of 3Cat for the pontiff's visit has required a great effort for all departments of the house. Blanca Cot, executive producer and her team have provided all the necessary elements to support the new work methodologies that Cinema Live entails beyond the extensive information coverage at the different venues.

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Cinematic Broadcast and Cinema Live: a standard reserved for special occasions?

In the broadcast of the events of Pope Leo XIV's visit to the Sagrada Família, beyond offering a Cinema Live workflow for the light and sound show, it was decided to opt for a UHD conventional for the broadcast of the interior mass in the Sagrada Família. This dual nature of the same broadcast explains why cinema broadcast is not a wild card, but a narrative tool at the service of the story it tells.

Fiction came first traditionally television; Now, it's time for the live streaming world to embrace tools and criteria from cinematographic language to expand the palette of options with which you can represent (and interpret) reality to your viewers: "Choosing a camera, deciding its optics and opting for digital or analog depends on the story; the film you are going to tell. Film broadcast and Cinema Live give you more tools, but they must be accompanied by artistic and technical criteria."

A report by Sergio Julián Gómez