I’m a Celebrity… get the TECHNOLOGY now!
Every production brings its unique technical challenges, so when ITV Studios Entertainment explained that this years’ I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! would be moving into a medieval castle, in the middle of North Wales, during a pandemic. Plus they wanted its entire post-production, logging and exec viewing all happening remotely in London, ITV Technology wondered if this was a challenge too far.
Fast forward a few months later and its launch to over 14 million viewers, this is how I’m a Celebrity achieved the unthinkable from the perspectives of Technology and Production.
During the warm summer months ITV Studios Entertainment started to secretly hatch an elaborate plan to ensure I’m a Celebrity could go ahead somewhere in the UK with all the prestige and glamour of the Australian version. But with all the COVID-19 restrictions they knew they’d have to reduce the on-set crew as much as possible.
Buoyed with the knowledge that remote production technology has finally become a viable solution, ITV set about its most ambitious remote production project to date. This would involve live production and playout taking place in Wales, post production for editing content (such as trials) would take place at ITN in London and digital, music, press and logging services would take place at ITVs own offices in London. When the show’s in Australia, owing to technical limitations, all these services would have to take place near the set.
To achieve connectivity between the sites, ITV made use of NEP’s Nimbra technology and 2x 1GB connections. This provided a Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) stream for those who needed access to a 24 hour video of the camp wherever they were. It also gave us talkback so that the team could speak to one another as if they were located together.
The connection let us use Remote Graphics Software (RGS) to connect to edit suite machines located in Wales. RGS is a technology that presents remote desktops with very low latency, meaning editing could take place at ITNs office in London despite the machines themselves being in Wales.
Finally, beyond the TV media itself, modern production requires a variety of documents and files to ensure compliance, music licensing, press and other key elements of the production are kept in control. Making use of ITVs existing Google services to share documents and sync them between teams was a critical component of the solution.
As the technology came online our eyes widened in delight, we saw our first glimpse of video via the SRT across the sites and we witnessed the first conversations taking place over talkback as our editors got their hands on media hundreds of miles away. Relief washed over the technology teams as we got sync between audio with video…we realised the future had arrived!
Over the course of the production the technology remained stable, we did have some problems here and there but ITV support teams and our supplier technical teams were always on hand to quickly fix issues so that our production teams weren’t disrupted.
We’ve been on a journey with I’m a Celebrity this year, but ITV Entertainment in collaboration with ITV Technology and its suppliers are truly proud of what’s been achieved and are delighted the effort has led to enjoyment for so many. We’ve learnt so much and created a new digitally innovative method for production. We’re not celebrities but get this technology in there!
