Bringing 360º Live Streaming to Broadcast Television
At Contrast VR, we’ve collaborated with different online teams and documentary shows at Al Jazeera. We wanted to take a step further and enable TV viewers to experience 360 immersion as well. The Stream, a social media based broadcast show, is experimental and innovative in its nature, making it a perfect fit for us.
It started with the simple question: “What can we do together?”
We decided on a 360º live stream of the broadcast TV show, the first endeavor of its kind at Al Jazeera. We chose to live stream the show on Facebook on November 8th, a year since Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential elections. Eight American citizens gathered at the Al Jazeera’s TV studio in Washington, D.C., to discuss Trump’s performance as the American President.
“360 is one of the most exciting things in journalism right now. And it’s a format that we’re still figuring out as an industry. So for us to try it out and see what it could potentially add to a live studio-based show was a no-brainer. I see it as the start of a period of exploration for us.” — Barry Malone, the Executive Producer of The Stream.
The Stream describes itself as a “social media community with its own TV show.” What makes The Stream a fascinating TV show is the way it engages its audience on social media before, during and after the main broadcast.
This philosophy of immersion, of fluid and multidirectional conversation and participation, aligns with our work at Contrast VR as an immersive storytelling studio.
The collaboration was about enhancing the idea of participation that is already inherent in the DNA of the social media based show. With the 360 live stream, you are suddenly in the middle of the discussion, finding yourself in the center of it, rather than sitting on the sidelines. You can see the guests, the hosts and the camera men all at the same time. You can experience the entire production as though you have an exclusive behind-the-scenes access to the set.
The way the collaboration worked was that we provided the technical expertise and consultation of 360 video, training the studio team in Washington, D.C., remotely from our headquarters in Doha, Qatar. We sent them an Orah 360 camera, and spent weeks testing the camera out within the studio.
Our Editorial Lead, Zahra Rasool, was present during the livestream in D.C. to help supervise and troubleshoot, “It was a great exercise, where we walked away from this successful collaboration having learned many things.”
Barry Malone spoke about some of the challenges, such as “figuring out how to have two broadcasts — a standard one going out live on TV and YouTube and the 360 video going out on Facebook — not interfere with each other but actually complement each other in some way. For this show, we had seven guests, two hosts, four studio cameras, a steadicam, and many many monitors. That’s a lot going on and everything has to be meticulously planned before we go live.”
One of the things we learned was to try out as many different possible positions of the camera as possible — its placement would dictate how the viewer would connect to the discussion and to show. We eventually ended up hanging the Orah upside down from the ceiling, working with engineers to flip the shot during the livestream.
“You have to be aware that the audience is going to see everything: the steadicam operator walking around, the cables on the floor, the door to the studio. And, though it goes against your instincts to some extent, you have to be comfortable with that.”
The second lesson we learned was about audio. The audio was too hot because we fed the audio from the TV broadcast straight into the Orah camera, which prevented us from being able to adjust the audio. For the next live stream, we will have a dedicated audio line for the 360 camera so that we can control the levels.
The third lesson we learned was always stop the streaming from Facebook. If you use Facebook to start the streaming, you have to end the streaming on Facebook. If you use a third party app (i.e. the Orah app) for the streaming, you have to end the streaming on the app. If you close the window without ending the stream, the only other way to end it is through deleting your video, which is why our video was so long with the second half missing audio.
As a collaboration between a relatively new immersive media studio and a well-established TV show within the network, it was an interesting and fruitful cross-pollination of ideas, skills and teams. With so many people involved, from engineers in Washington, D.C. figuring out where to place the camera, to producers from Al Jazeera English in Doha coordinating distribution, the live stream was far from perfect. However, it was a rewarding collaboration because it allowed us to experiment and push forward new opportunities.
