FREMONT, Calif.— Spanish production company Ruima Video Art managed all technical production aspects, including IMAG (image magnification), of this summer’s Maspalomas Costa Canaria Soul Festival with acquisition control and delivery solutions from Blackmagic Design.
The festival, broadcast from the scenic Playa de San Agustín in Gran Canaria, Spain, was recorded live and later aired as two 50-minute programs on Radio Televisión Canaria. The eighth annual festival, which ran from July 19-21, featured an eclectic lineup of international soul and R&B artists.
“The 500-square-meter beach transformed into a stunning stage for the festival, though it also posed significant technical and logistical challenges,” Pedro Ruiz Mateos, founder of Ruima Video Art, said.
The beach, however, lacked any video infrastructure, creating a challenge for maintaining reliable signal integrity. Harsh environmental conditions like high temperatures and sand compounded matters.
“That [the environmental conditions] necessitated a robust, low-latency system to tackle the entire production process—from acquisition and monitoring to distribution and vision mixing for both IMAG projection and recording,” he said.
Ruima Video Art relied on seven Blackmagic Design cameras. Two Blackmagic URSA Broadcast G2 cameras, positioned in the front of house, captured the artists’ performances while an additional unit mounted on a nearly 28-foot (8.5-meter) hot head crane provided wide and dynamic shots. “Blackmagic’s SMPTE fiber chains provided video, program return and power with camera control,” Ruiz Mateos said.
Four Blackmagic Studio Camera 4K Pro G2s—two fixed and remotely controlled and two manually operated—provided extra coverage. Camera control and remote shading was done with the ATEM Camera Control Panel.
Ruima Video Art used an ATEM 2 M/E Constellation HD live production switcher to switch the HD broadcast as well as the HD feeds for the IMAG (image magnification) display. A Blackmagic Videohub 40x40 12G router handles signal distribution and management. Each camera ISO and the final program out was recorded using eight HyperDeck Studio HD Plus broadcast desks.
“At the heart of our broadcast, the switcher’s multilayer mixing capabilities and advanced transitions ensured we could adapt swiftly to the dynamic festival environment, delivering a great viewing experience for audiences,” Ruiz Mateos said.
“We fed a 6-meter [nearly 20-foot] wide, 3-meter [nearly 10-foot] tall LED wall positioned behind the video village, and other repeater screens, with live feeds from the ATEM switcher, to help bring those further back in the audience closer to the performances,” he said.
The program mix and camera ISOs were all captured in 1080p25 for subsequent editing and color correction. “Once we completed post-production, we packaged everything up to comply with the broadcaster’s technical standards, delivering a 1080i50 program via FTP to the television network,” he said.
More information is available on the company’s website.
