NEWBURY, ENGLAND—As the curtain rose on a recent production of the National Theatre Live’s performance of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America,” Snell Advanced Media was backstage helping provide the first HDR production. SAM’s Kahuna production switcher, outfitted with the latest version of the FormatFusion technology, helped bring HDR capabilities to all inputs and outputs and was deployed in Telegenic’s OB truck for the two-part live broadcast.
The Kahuna with FormatFusion4 technology provided the production team with both SDR and HDR capabilities, as well as use rec.709 and rec.2020 simultaneously. The entire production was delivered through the UHD switcher. The National Theatre had used SAM’s Kahuna switcher in the past, but this was the first time it was used for UHD/HDR purposes, per one of the broadcast’s technical producers.
The “Angels in America” broadcast, which starred Andrew Garfield, Nathan Lane, Russell Tovey, Denise Gough and James McArdle, was shown live in more than 2,500 cinemas in 60 countries. The two-part production was shown in theaters on July 20 and July 27.
