In Jan 2022, AIR streamed a Major League Rugby preseason match between the LA Giltinis and SD Legion. What you see in this highlight reel was shot with six remote control AIR One™ units — Cameras 1 & 2 (wide and tight follow) at midfield atop a 25ft high rise stand, Cameras 3 & 4 at field level at each 5-meter line, and Cameras 5 & 6 high in each end zone. — and not much else. We hardwired all six cameras to an ethernet port in our production tent at midfield, where the entire crew sat. Each AIR One™ unit streamed video directly to an AIRcloud™ based vMix switching instance. We used a high-speed wireless point-to-point hop to bridge connectivity from the hardwire gigabit LAN to a hardwire 150Mbs broadband internet connection approximately 1/4 mile away. That’s right — though we don’t recommend it as best practice, everything you see here was streamed and switched wirelessly in the cloud.
Crew consisted of one producer, one TD, and 5 camera ops (one controlling two cameras). Our TD controlled the AIRcloud™ based vMix instance via an iMac. Camera ops each used an iPad to control their AIR One™ and were a mix of professional and amateur crew. Laptops and additional monitors provided supplementary confidence monitors as well as a multiview display of all the cameras for the entire crew.
Because the was the first time any of the crew had shot the sport, a South African native and rugby aficionado stood behind them and acted as assistant director to ensure that we accurately tracked the action. The program output streamed from the AIRcloud™ vMix instance to the AIR YouTube channel and congruently streamed on SD Legion’s Facebook page. Audience engagement was great for a preseason match, with over 1800 views and very high comment rates on game day.
Entire production was setup and broken down same day.