Matchday 2 for UEFA and the Gravity Media team at The Production Centre in London were involved in a busy week of European club football beginning with the UEFA Champions League, and culminating in a bumper Thursday, with 32 UEFA Europa League matches coming into the building. All matches were packaged up for live and highlights programming, as well as being re-edited for digital platforms, before being delivered to rights holding broadcasters around the World.
Our flexible Production Centre in London offers full live production, whether on-site or as part of a hybrid remote configuration. It’s ideal for fast turnaround rolling highlights edit for broadcast or digital, live streams, in-match clips for social and digital, as well as crafted highlights, along with features and traditional post-production.
The Production Centre in London has been robustly designed for the delivery of live sport, however, it is equally capable of providing broadcast facilities for live events and other fast turnaround programming genres.
Football is in our DNA and to find out how we can help you with your next production, email enquiries@gravitymedia.com
This week saw the return of the UEFA Champions League and Europa League competitions to The Production Centre in London.
The Gravity Media team at The Production Centre in London was on hand to deliver highlights shows, digital clips and commentaries over three busy nights. On the evening of Thursday 16 September alone, the Gravity Media team delivered content from 32 matches for various platforms and broadcasters from our brand new state of the art VT area.
Our flexible Production Centre in Chiswick, West London offers full live production, whether on-site or as part of a hybrid remote configuration. Ideal for fast turnaround rolling highlights edit for broadcast or digital, live streams, in-match clips for social and digital, as well as crafted highlights, along with features and traditional post-production.
The Production Centre in London has been robustly designed for the delivery of live sport, however, it is equally capable of providing broadcast facilities for live events and other fast turnaround programming genres.
Football is in our DNA and to find out how we can help you with your next production, email enquiries@gravitymedia.com
All at Gravity Media are delighted to hear that our friends at ITV Studios have been awarded Entertainment Craft Team of the year at the BAFTA TV Craft Awards 2021. You can view the announcement here.
Gravity Media has been supporting the team’s global reality hit I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! for well over 15 years, traditionally shipping kit and crew to the Australian jungle to set up the show’s technical and broadcast facilities.
Last year, of course, I’m A Celebrity moved to a new location in North Wales, with the global pandemic having forced show bosses rethink the logistical operation for the first time in the show’s 18-year history. This meant days of careful planning and design, retuning the setup for its new home, and ensuring that every facet of the operation was safe from COVID-19. It took a crew of 80, over 50 cameras, and 50km of cabling, but the result exceeded even the most optimistic of expectations.
I’m A Celebrity 2020 had its biggest ever launch episode, with a massive 13.8 million TV viewers and a 52% audience share. This was the show’s second-biggest audience ever, only beaten by the 2004 finale. Subsequent episodes averaged around 10 million viewers a night.
The Australian jungle has been such an integral part of the show for the past 18 years, it was a big challenge to continue to deliver what viewers love about I’m A Celebrity from a new, UK location. But Gwrych definitely did that; the castle presented an amazing and atmospheric setting on a hillside overlooking the Irish Sea, and the production team was able to adapt the format to make it a special and memorable 20th series of show.
Here’s to an equally successful 2021. Any guesses on where it’s likely to be held?
It was another double header over the weekend covering the Premier League and Bundesliga, as the team produced full studio wrap around shows for MOLA TV.
To end the first month of 2021, Mola TV’s first studio show went live on Saturday 30 January for the Arsenal v Manchester United football match. Mola TV then continued with their double header and second studio show which went live on Sunday 31 January for the West Ham v Liverpool football match. This fixture, saw Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah score for the first time in seven Premier League games with a brilliant double.
The Gravity Media team at The Production Centre, London continues to produces their studio wrap around show around a selection of live games throughout the Premier League and Bundesliga season with socially distant arrangements in place.
Under the agreement, Gravity Media provides the studio, gallery, and staff to produce the coverage, which will feature matches on both Saturdays and Sundays, the Premier League match being followed by the Bundesliga game.
Gravity Media has installed a video wall which allows a live feed of a beauty camera from different grounds to be displayed behind the studio guests, making it easy to switch locations when presenting double-headers from different stadiums.
With UHD quality and minimal bezel space showing, this solution is ready for Mola TV week in week out whichever match they choose to follow.
Football is in our DNA and to find out how we can help you with your next production, email enquiries@gravitymedia.com
Gravity Media is more than our sports offerings; we can, in fact, be very entertaining.
With three shows in America the USA under our entertainment umbrella, the team is busy helping our clients to keep their people safe and their productions on schedule in these most challenging of times with lockdowns and COVID-19 precautions entrenched into our workflows.
Our magazine style show in the USA has recently been described by one dedicated viewer as, “Aa warm and light-hearted, family–oriented show that is great to wake up to. (The hosts) and their friends keep me laughing and entertained. This show truly gets me up and going every morning so I thank the producers. I can’t imagine not waking up to this show. My family and I became hooked this past Christmas. I love how it’s actually something DIFFERENT than the norm. Comical, fun, and up-lifting.”
Gravity Media also provides the broadcast equipment on two Viacom comedies designed for young audiences that air not just on American television but have had international versions in Latin America, Sweden, Poland, Italy, Denmark and Canada. Fun is fun in any language?
An exhilarating six weeks of UEFA Europa League action saw the Gravity Media team providing highlights packages for all six rounds of the Group Stages. With services ranging from instant highlights feeds and match-night commentary to a fully-scripted highlights show and social media content, the Gravity Media Production Centre in London was in full swing, delivering action from a staggering 24 games on each match night.
Our production facilities are fully equipped to provide broadcasting and post-production services for live events including the UEFA Champions League and Europa League, the FA Cup and wider sport and entertainment programming.
A robust and agile broadcast facility that has fully redundant technical power, The Production Centre in London has also been customised to adhere to strict COVID-19 guidelines, ensuring the safety of all staff on even the busiest of nights. The rules were observed throughout, with new production areas built to accommodate the project.
The centre carries a new installation of galleries and editing suites ideal for fast turnaround highlights and optimal production control. All of our edit suites are HD capable, with dedicated broadcast quality monitoring for both edit operations and additional incoming feeds. Designed with fast turnaround workflows in mind, we cater the facilities to the job, ensuring we have access to all we need to produce high-quality programming.
The finals of the Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL) took place on Saturday 28 November in Sydney where Melbourne Stars played Sydney Thunder. Congratulations to Sydney Thunder as they were crowned the champions of The WBBL and won by seven wickets with 38 balls left.
The WBBL is the Australian women’s domestic Twenty20 cricket competition and features eight city-based franchises, branded identically to the men’s Big Bash League.
The interim ratings for the final saw an average audience of 428,801 viewers tuning in making it the highest rating WBBL match on 7mate and the second highest on Fox Cricket ever. It is also 12% higher than the WBBL|05 Final, demonstrating the competition’s growth.
Gravity Media was once again contracted to support Cricket Australia across multiple competitions with both streaming and broadcast services. Gravity Media’s turnkey production of the cricket live streams of the WBBL continued over the weekend from at the North Sydney Oval.
The complete Women’s Big Bash League saw Gravity Media stream a total of 35 matches to the Fox streaming platform Kayo with 12 matches broadcast on Fox Sports.
This project also covers the international tour match between Australia and India which will be broadcast in Australia and around the world, the men’s domestic one day competition – Marsh Cup - as well as the women’s national one day cup final and a range of other age based competitions.
The Emirates FA Cup: Behind The Dreams documentary is a collection of stories from the FA Cup. From the extra preliminary round to the finals, profiling some of the characters taking part in the world’s oldest club competition.
The Gravity Media team put the final touches to the BT Sport one-hour documentary featuring a round by round look at some of the more obscure stories around this seasons FA Cup competition.
Production for this documentary was completed at The Production Centre in Manchester.
At Gravity Media, every day we operate within the top tier of world sport. We work across a wide range of competitions but, at the heart of our business, is a rich tradition of delivering high-end content and live production across the full spectrum of world football. Find out more about our football DNA here.
Gravity Media works with some of the biggest names in football and for those who choose to partner with Gravity Media, this expertise, along with our state-of-the-art facilities in London and global network of offices, is at their disposal. For more information, please contact enquiries@gravitymedia.com.
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As live sports are starting to make a return amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Gravity Media teams across the globe are helping our clients to keep their people safe and their productions on schedule in these most challenging of times.
There was no rest over the last weekend for us as the Gravity Media UK projects team was at Silverstone for the British Grand Prix 2020. For the fourth race, the Gravity Media team provided outside broadcast facilities to Whisper for the Channel 4 F1 highlights programme. Outside broadcast truck Pictor was in pole position at Silverstone with four cameras and a Portajib from Lammo Ltd alongside the remote commentary set up for the British Grand Prix 2020.
The UK team also successfully delivered The FA Cup Final on Saturday 1 August covering the Arsenal vs Chelsea Match. The international programme started one hour before kick-off with the full build up being watching by audiences around the world. Outside broadcast truck Pictor was also at Wembley for the big screens production.
In France, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Alexander Zverev were crowned the champions of The Ultimate Tennis Showdown 2. Along with our partners Events In & Out and Girraphic (providing the on-screen graphics), Gravity Media provided a turn-key solution that included years of production and technical experience of tennis broadcasting. The Gravity Media team consisted of around 25 people, including all the editorial crew (cameramen, EVS, director, floor manager) and all of the technical crew.
Gravity Media provided a full range of equipment, including 19 cameras with a mixture of broadcast cameras and PTZ, to capture the event. The sound design was at its maximum, with the addition of external sound in the mix (such as audience applause) to create a specific atmosphere. And all of this took place successfully whilst following strict social distancing guidelines.
Down under in Australia, an incredible amount of work has gone into the ever-evolving logistics by the Gravity Media team for the next round of Supercars in Darwin this coming weekend as border restrictions continue to throw up all sorts of challenges. Keep your eyes peeled for more information next week!
Contact us on enquiries@gravitymedia.com to see how we can help you with your next production!
As a Production Manager, I’m responsible for overseeing multiple contracts for high-profile events.
Problem solving is a huge part of the job, as everyone looks to the Production Manager to fix any issues, particularly on the day of an event. You definitely need a willingness to take on any task necessary in this role.
Of the five clients I look after, the biggest is The Football Association (FA). During last season’s FA Cup, we provided 28 Outside Broadcasts delivering top-quality, multi-camera match coverage, as well as World Feeds, Promo’s, Preview Shows and Highlights packages.
I love the variation in my job – it never gets boring. Every shoot is different, and you’re guaranteed to learn something new with every production.
During the lead-up to big events, especially mid-season, I can expect to work long hours, including some evenings and weekends. There’s a good balance though, as our days are shorter during the summer months.
During the week, I usually arrive at the office in Chiswick for 10am. I live in Notting Hill, so the commute isn’t too bad. I’ll check through my inbox and make a to-do list for the day. I rely on lists and timelines as I’m usually juggling at least four projects at varying stages. It’s important to be thoroughly organised, as with so much going on it’s easy to miss something. You don’t want a small detail to snowball into a massive issue on-site.
Next, it’s likely I’ll spend some time on the phone with clients. If a project is in the early stages we’ll discuss budget and requirements as well as ideas for the production.
After that, I may spend time emailing freelance directors and producers, booking them for future dates, before checking in with technical managers and colleagues from other departments. As a Production Manager, I liaise with all other departments regularly – from graphics and design, to the engineering and technical teams. Part of my job is bringing all the different elements of a shoot together.
Despite working some unsociable hours, there’s a great social atmosphere here. It’s good to have friends at work and it also helps the productions. When you get to know the team on a personal level, you can build trust and improve communication.
In my role, an important task is putting together a call sheet for each shoot. So the afternoon could see me doing this. A call sheet contains every detail of an upcoming production, from logistical arrangements, such as which hotels crew will stay at, to camera plans and everything else on the technical side, as well as risk assessments and other health and safety information. There could be more than a hundred people working on a job and on the day, they will all look to you as the point of contact. Everything relevant to that production needs to be in the call sheet.
Finally, I might need to spend some time tracking costs for a previous event, and working out how much to bill the client, before finishing up the working day at 6pm. I may need to stay on later, if it’s really busy or an issue comes up. You have to be able to solve problems quickly and efficiently in this job, while also having the foresight to anticipate potential future issues.
While my work can get stressful, it’s definitely worth it. Being pitch-side for the Six Nations or FA Cup final and working closely with such talented sports people is an amazing experience.
THE PRODUCTION PROCESS
Every shoot is different, yet the process for each production is similar. First, I’ll speak to the client about what they want and their budget, and determine what we can do for them, before providing a quotation.
Next is the planning stage. Arranging which producers, camera operators, OB company etc, are most appropriate for the job. I work closely with producers and tech managers for this, as they are the original vision for what’s required for the best production.
After that, it’s time to start thinking logistically – do we need any permissions, for instance. There’s time scales to consider, and the edits for post-production. Also, speaking to the venue about things like health and safety and parking permits.
Now I need to put everything together into one place – that’s the call sheet. All information relevant to the production needs to be there, as everyone involved has to know what’s going on.
On the day, it’s my job to make sure everyone, including the client, is happy and that the team has what they need to work. There is a very real element of unpredictability. Any problem that comes in on the day must be dealt with – as a Production Manager, there’s really no boundary to what your task may be.
After an event, I need to ensure everything has been paid for and that every freelancer has a Purchase Order (PO). Finally, I will take account of tracked costs before working out how much to bill the client.
Q&A
What advice would you give a job seeker who’s thinking about applying for a job with Gravity Media?
Be open to learning as much as you can and be prepared to step in wherever needed. A brilliant thing about Gravity Media is that opportunities to learn new skills across different areas of the business are there for the taking. Be willing to ask questions and get ready to build the career you want.
When you tell people about your job, what’s one thing that surprises them, or gets them excited about the work you do?
The high-profile nature of the projects we do is exciting. Family and friends tuning in will often text me pictures of live events I’m working on. I still get the odd moment myself when I think ‘wow, this is my job’. Walking out of the tunnel during the Six Nations, for instance.
What is your most favourite project you have worked on with Gravity Media?
Travelling around France for a month last summer following the teams playing in the FIFA Women’s World Cup was amazing.
The New South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL) is the governing body for rugby league in New South Wales, and the organisation that runs the annual State of Origin competition.
State of Origin is the pinnacle of Australian rugby league – a best-of-three match series between two state representative sides: the New South Wales Blues and the Queensland Maroons.
NSWRL asked Input Media to produce a one-hour documentary following Brad Fittler in his first year as NSW Origin coach. As the official ‘behind the scenes’ film crew, we enjoyed unprecedented access to the team, and witnessed some amazing moments and unique scenes shared between players and club staff.
From the selection process and team announcements, onto the training field and back into the locker room, our crew was immersed with the team, capturing the action as it happened and gaining on-the-spot thoughts and insights from players and coaching staff alike.
With the 2019 Origin series kicking off in Brisbane on Wednesday 5 June, the one-hour documentary aired for the first time on Friday 31 May on Channel 9, immediately following the Friday Night Football match. Further airings are planned leading into Game 1.
February 2019 saw the inaugural Eurovision Australia Decides on the Gold Coast with a premium production and technical team involved in pulling off this exciting event.
With Paul Clarke from Blink TV, the driving force behind the show in partnership with SBS, the team brought the show seamlessly to air utilising the Good News Rundown for the show’s scripting and LIVE rundown and CuePilot, a cloud-based software for directing, designed specifically for entertainment shows.
Watch the interview with TV Producer Randall Churchill to see why CuePilot was chosen for this live broadcast and behind the scenes footage of CuePilot in action.
