Remote production using Timeline's Stream Anywhere App

Gareth Malone was on a self-made mission to bring the nation together through the power of music, using song to create a unique snapshot of this unprecedented moment in history.

Gareth Malone’s The Choir took place over six weeks, with fourteen musicians using Timeline’s broadcast app, Stream Anywhere. 

Gareth Malone’s home studio was rigged with a number of cameras; a remotely operated robotic head camera to allow Timeline engineers to vary the shot as Gareth moved around the studio, a fixed “traditional” camera and an iPhone camera using the Stream Anywhere app to give Gareth the ability to mount it for close up shots in the studio and to take it outside. The studio was connected back to Timeline’s Broadcast Centre in Ealing via the public internet and via our 4G bonding equipment, bringing back pictures, high quality audio and communications. Each of the members of the choir was sent a kit containing lighting, iPhone and an iPad as well as high quality microphones to make the very most of the stunning audio that the system delivered, they set the kit up themselves whilst being talked through it by one of our engineers.

Getting everyone in sync was a real challenge for this show and we further developed our Stream Anywhere App to provide additional tools to make this possible. With every member of the choir linked back to us over a different internet path, we needed a way of working out the latency for each contributor and then enabling our remotely working sound supervisor to use this information to get everyone singing in time. At times it was a real mind bender, but the results sounded (and looked) fantastic, the broadcast show was a much-needed heart-warming moment in the early stages of lockdown.