This year, the third annual Daily Telegraph Bush Summit was held online for the first time on Friday 29th October in Sydney. The event brought together community leaders, farmers, industry bodies, and policy makers to discuss crucial economic, social and political issues for regional communities in NSW.  

Hosted by The Daily Telegraph Editor, Ben English, the Bush Summit 2021 covered four key themes of irrigation, population, regeneration and disruption. The event included keynote addresses from Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and featured an extensive guest list with Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet, State and Federal Opposition Leaders Chris Minns and Anthony Albanese, Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes, former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, and NSW Farmer President James Jackson amongst other prominent business leaders in Australia. 

Gravity Media facilitated the Bush Summit in our studio at the Production Centre in Sydney and provided a complete solution with studio floor and control room crew for the important 6-hour event, which was livestreamed to a national audience on The Daily Telegraph website.  

The 9-metre LED wall in the studio provided a dynamic background with virtual guests from around Australia and abroad, joining a series of panel discussions about the importance of trade in regional communities, and the impact of the pandemic. The event culminated in the formation of a communique to the NSW state government, a list of actions that are vital to the improvement of living in the bush. 

To find out how Gravity Media can help you with your next production, email enquiries@gravitymedia.com.   

The Cash Converters Supercars E Series has wrapped for 2021!  

After an incredibly successful season last year, the series came back in 2021, bigger than ever before. 

Hosted by Supercars Hall of Fame inductee, Neil Crompton, The Cash Converters Supercars E Series took place over six weeks filming at both PCS (Production Centre Sydney) and PCM (Production Centre Melbourne) to service all the needs for the Eseries broadcast. Regular Eseries commentators Chad Neylon and Johnathon Simon also joined to call the qualifying sessions and races from our studio in Melbourne. 

While most sports suffered throughout 2020, the Supercars Eseries was able to thrive under the lockdown environment, with racers able to participate from their homes via video conferencing. The series made headlines around the globe, with elite drivers joining the series from F1 to NASCAR. 

The 2021 series offered fans a brand-new framework with a mix of main game Supercars drivers and pro gamers, competing for a top prize of more than $20,000 AUD. The competition was broadcast live in prime-time television, along with a range of digital platforms – Fox Sports 506, Kayo, 7Plus, as well as streamed on Supercars’ Twitch, Facebook and YouTube channels. 

To find out how we can help with your next production, email enquiries@gravitymedia.com 

The Olympic Games have always been, by far, the most complicated sporting event to broadcast.  

Gravity Media’s challenge to facilitate the Seven Network’s coverage had to consider the increased diversity and volume of events run concurrently over little more than a fortnight, each requiring specialised production, channeled through a labyrinth of media platforms.  

Then, when you throw in the layers of preparation required for the uncertainty of an international pandemic and Tokyo 2021, it makes the challenge that much more incredible. 

Gravity Media partnered with Seven to organise the network of communications, using a combination of leased and itinerant services between all our locations across four countries, from RBC & BCM in Melbourne, IBC in Tokyo, The Production Centre in Sydney (PCS) and facilities in London. All sites were able to talk to each other using more than 136 talkback panels and 780 ports.  

330 staff worked 75,000 hours across four production locations, each operating under strict compliance. But the broader situation of multiple state policies towards COVID-19, and the fluid situation in Tokyo itself, had the entire project on a knife edge, needing to pivot whichever way the outbreak turned, in Tokyo or Australia.    

More than 600 hours of live coverage across two  FTA HD Broadcast channels, and 13,000 hours of 7Plus HD Digital and VOD content were delivered flawlessly under these extraordinary conditions, using three studios with live hostings across two states. A three-hour highlights package was edited and played out simultaneously following 16 hours of live coverage daily. IBC Production based in Tokyo added to the Sydney and Melbourne control rooms and a DR control room. The flexibility that had to be built into this system was a credit to everyone involved in months of planning. Multiple options and back-ups had to be built into an already complicated system. 

Logistically, the same flexibility had to be applied. 25,000 meals had to be served over 21 days – all under COVID protocols, with little warning as to which centre the production might have to rely on if government policy changed.     

Our team of project and production managers had to provide multiple versions of floor plans and prepare for ever-changing guidelines for staff location and service capability.  

In Tokyo, this required a web of connectivity to ensure a seamless blend of host and rights-holders broadcasting to provide for all those platforms. More than 90 SDI fibre feeds. Five connected venues integrating mixed zones, hosting positions, and ISO cameras.  

If that’s not impressive enough, more than 80 incoming circuits and 20 outgoing video circuits at the RBC enabled OBS IP feeds, IBC/PCS and BCM SDI feeds. There were two MDS Satellite Downlinks for international signal backup and content delivery. Four Craft Edits and three Fast Edits at RBC with remote edit access at PCS, along with two Fast Edits at PCS and three Fast Digital Edits. There were four Off Tube Booths at RBC and two OTB’s at PCS with an additional VO Booth. 

The stakes were high, as any breakdown in this vast network of interactivity – whether COVID-induced or technical – could compromise the integrity of the production. However, through all the up’s and downs, Gravity Media was able to deliver a flawless event, which in turn gained Seven the highest ratings and streaming numbers ever for an Olympic Games.  

This amazing achievement during such unpredictable times is a credit to all the teams across Gravity Media and the Seven Network. 

To find out how Gravity Media can help you with your next production, email enquiries@gravitymedia.com. 

Gravity Media is thrilled to have partnered with Milkmoney and Destination NSW to deliver a dazzling harbour-side shoot for the worldwide release of ABBA’s brand new album: ‘Voyage’ on Friday 3rd September. 

After a 38-year hiatus, ABBA have launched their new album via a series of spectacular global moments, featuring Sydney’s Harbour Bridge.  

For the event, Gravity Media provided ground camera crew and drone crew in the early hours of the morning to capture the brilliant light display and album artwork projection that illuminated the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge, along with control room facilities to view incoming feeds, direct, edit and deliver the content in time for the live launch that same morning. 

Sydney joined eight other cities around the world – Tokyo, London, New York, Stockholm, Rio, Reykjavik, Berlin, Cape Town – in celebrating the much-anticipated album with the vision of the Sydney Harbour Bridge featured in the livestream on ABBA’s official YouTube Channel. 

To find out how Gravity Media can help you with your next production, email enquiries@gravitymedia.com.   

Gravity Media has been producing the What’s New on Telstra TV monthly videos from the studios at the Production Centre in Sydney since early 2019.  

On Tuesday 22 June, Gravity Media facilitated the NAIDOC Week Livestream for the NSW Department of Education.  

NSW public schools celebrate NAIDOC Week every year to reflect and celebrate the history, culture and achievements of the First Nation peoples – recognising them as the Traditional Custodians of the land. 

NAIDOC is not just a celebration for Indigenous communities but for all Australians. The week is an opportunity to participate in a range of activities and to support the local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.  

This year, NAIDOC Week 2021 involved a virtual celebration via video stream, hosted by the Aboriginal Outcomes and Partnerships Directorate. The celebration featured a smoking ceremony on Darug Country with musical performances by Ziggy Ramo and Inner West Performing Arts School. 

Gravity Media provided a three-camera broadcast/livestream solution on location at the NSW Department of Education. The broadcast feeds were fed via LiveU cellular technology back to the Production Centre in Sydney where it was directed, switched and played out online by our crew in the control room. 

To find out how Gravity Media can help you with your next production, email enquiries@gravitymedia.com   

Gravity Media teamed up once again with Telstra Purple and their creative agency partner Imagination to produce the Telstra Purple Realise Cloud event on May 26. 

Telstra Purple is the largest Australian-owned technology services organisation, providing services and solutions for businesses around the world. 

Telstra Purple Realise Cloud is an invitation-only event that brings together leading experts in their fields as well as best in class partnerships, to unlock the best outcomes for businesses. 

Hosted from Telstra’s Customer Insight Centre Theatre in Sydney and integrated in Telstra’s Studio T, Gravity Media provided full camera and broadcast equipment complete with crew and post-production services to deliver the exclusive five-hour livestreamed event.   

To find out how Gravity Media can help you with your next production, email enquiries@gravitymedia.com    

Gravity Media provided production crew and equipment for the Transurban Investor Day Livestream which was held at the Telstra Customer Insight Centre Theatre and Studio in Sydney. Transurban are one of the world’s largest toll-road operators that manages and develops urban toll road networks in Australia, Canada and the United States. 

Transurban’s annual Investor Day provides the opportunity for the investment community to interact with the Group, outside of the statutory reporting cycle. This year the Investor Day included presentations by all members of the Executive Committee, with a particular focus on the opportunity pipeline and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors.  

While the event is usually held in-person, and via audio webcast, this year’s Investor Day was fully virtual and took advantage of available technology to create an engaging and professional online experience for attendees.  

For the event, Gravity Media helped facilitate live hostings from Telstra’s Studio T, a multi-camera setup for a six-person panel session in the Theatre, a full integration of the broadcast from the Studio T control room and signal encoding at Gravity Media’s Production Centre in Sydney. 

For more information on how Gravity Media can help you with your next production, please email enquiries@gravitymedia.com.