Premiere Entertainment Ready for Red Carpet Coverage with Broadcast Pix

January 15, 2010

Source: Broadcast Pix

Broadcast Pix announced that Premiere Entertainment Network, a video production company based in Sherman Oaks, Calif., is using the Broadcast Pix Slate 1000 integrated production system during its live coverage of red carpet events.

According to Brad Sexton, founder and partner of Premiere Entertainment, the company has been hired by movie studios, music companies, and broadcast networks to produce live, multi-camera red carpet event coverage since 2000.

The company had rented satellite trucks in the past, but recently decided to invest in its own production truck to save money and improve production quality. Its new vehicle is a HD mobile production truck, complete with satellite dish, green room, and edit suite.

Premiere Entertainment has previously used the Slate 1000, rented from VMI in Southern California, for a number of productions, including the premieres of Avatar, Michael Jackson’s This Is It and The Twilight Saga: New Moon, as well as the American Music Awards last November. Sexton said the company will use the Broadcast Pix system extensively during the upcoming awards season that begins this weekend, as well as its recently announced LIVE from the Red Carpet weekly program.

“My technical directors absolutely love it,” said Sexton. “It’s a very robust piece of equipment – dependable, which they like, and so easy to use.” The Slate 1000 also helps reduce personnel needs on site, Sexton added.

Premiere Entertainment estimated there were close to 3.2 million viewers for its exclusive live pre-show and red carpet American Music Awards coverage, which was streamed live at www.abc.com and provided as an uplink for ABC affiliates. The program included a 30-minute countdown show that featured almost a dozen video clips, followed by 90 minutes of coverage from the red carpet using eight HD cameras.

Bob Bolling of RBL Engineering served as TD for the American Music Awards production for Premiere Entertainment. He said no external playback devices were used during the show – all graphics, audio, and video roll-ins, including commercials, were accessed from the Broadcast Pix Slate system. According to Bolling, Fluent Macros was the key to the show’s success.

“I created more than 50 macros to help run the show. All our commercials and bumpers, plus the animated alpha channel graphics, were executed flawlessly using Fluent Macros,” he said. “The on-air product looked great – the Broadcast Pix system outperformed all our expectations.”

In addition, Fluent Watch-Folders, a new feature found in Slate Version 7.3 software, helped keep the show organized. Bolling said all lower-third graphics, which had been created in Photoshop, had to be loaded into the Slate during the show. “Two video elements had to be loaded after the show had started, too,” he added, “but Watch-Folders made it easy to find the new roll-ins and graphics so we could and play them to air.”

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