by FilmInk staff
26 of this year’s California-based Emmy Award nominees were live streamed into the telecast using kits built around Blackmagic Design’s Pocket Cinema Camera 6K and ATEM Mini Pro switchers. LA based full service video equipment rental house C Mount incorporated this equipment into special kits, which also included a 27” monitor and a master power cord, which were supplied to the nominees.
“The whole event went really smoothly and the Blackmagic cameras and switchers were a huge part of that,” said Jason Liquori, C Mount’s lead custom gear solutions provider who oversaw the design and installation of the Emmy kits. “We were asked to build kits that included a camera that could give a cinematic look but also played within broadcast rules and standards. We had to also include a broadcast quality switcher, and everything had to be able to be remotely controlled and allow the feeds to be easily sent back and forth from the Staple Center control room and our own facility.”
The 72nd, but first virtual Emmy ceremony, live broadcast around the world, brought together nominees in 20 cities and 10 countries, while Jimmy Kimmel hosted the show at Staples Centre Los Angeles to a mostly empty arena.
“The amount of control that the ATEM Mini Pro gives, made both my crew’s life easier and added no stress to the nominees,” said Liquori. “We built the kits, rolled them into the nominees’ homes and they just plugged them in. The biggest task for the nominees was making sure they were in a good spot for WIFI. Beyond that, the kit was really plug and play for them.
“The recent software updates to Blackmagic’s camera OS was what got me thinking we could use a combination of the ATEM Mini Pro and Pocket. We had full camera control and a USB interface for Webcam, along with a large sensor camera that gave us amazing cinematic images. And both are compact, so we could be an efficient kit that took up very little space wherever the nominees were.
“The scope of what the Emmys was looking to do was really ambitious, and because it was the Emmys there was very little room for anything to go wrong. The Blackmagic products worked perfectly and always give me the freedom to be creative.”
