WATERLOO, Ontario—The cinematic production and dynamic camera movement company KALA is relying on Dejero connectivity solutions for a new production vehicle that handles multiple functions while shooting content on film, TV and commercial sets.
For the new vehicle, KALA worked with integrated connectivity expert First Mile Technologies to install Dejero solutions into its cutting-edge production vehicle, which has been deployed for the production of multiple car commercials, including Volkswagen, Nissan, Toyota, Lexus and Mercedes.
Many of them were shot in locations with network connectivity challenges, such as mountainsides, frozen lakes and remote villages. The KALA vehicle uses Dejero EnGo mobile transmitters that combine multiple cellular and/or satellite networks to achieve reliable connectivity for real-time remote collaboration. The live feeds are transmitted to geographically distributed creative teams from wireless remote controlled cameras positioned on cranes and arms in moving vehicles and other set locations.
“With our new production vehicle, we’ve been able to combine camera system, connectivity and creative decision-making functionalities into one; streamlining the entire production and post-production process and facilitating remote collaboration in real-time,” said cinematographer and co-founder of KALA, Vinit Borrison.
“Being able to live transmit to any distance, to and from any location is game-changing,” he added. “Creative decision makers no longer need to physically be on set or wait for location footage to arrive on a hard drive before offering feedback to other team members. The amount of time, logistical effort and money that this technology saves is massive. What’s more, we can turn on connectivity with the push of a button – we don’t need a specific person on site to set up monitors, cables and often flakey communication hotspots.”
The camera feeds are transported in real-time to a Dejero WayPoint receiver, a cloud server or via First Mile Web RTC platform. The live video stream can then be viewed in a simple browser or through secure video screening applications by creative teams in various locations in different parts of the world, or from a central base camp. Directors, editors and agency personnel can collaborate and provide instantaneous feedback and direction to the remote production crew on set. The feeds are also displayed simultaneously on five monitors within the vehicle for the production crew on location.
First Mile also integrated a ruggedized Dejero GateWay network aggregation device into the KALA connectivity build in order to provide resilient mobile broadband internet access from any location. The GateWay enables fast video and data transfers with sub-second latency. Like EnGo, the GateWay uses Dejero’s award winning Smart Blending Technology, which aggregates all available IP networks and dynamically manages the fluctuating bandwidth, packet loss, and latency differences of individual connections in real-time.
