East meets West

A collective of nations came together to celebrate cultural fusion at a stunning concert as East meets West at the Royal Albert Hall.

A collective of nations came together to celebrate cultural fusion at a stunning concert as East met West at the Royal Albert Hall. Song Zuying, the most celebrated soprano in China, legendary tenor Andrea Bocelli and Chinese pianist Lang Lang, took to the stage for a beautiful series of classical performances, all of which were accompanied by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

The event saw a collection of solo performances, as well as a number of unique collaborative performances with all three artists.

The brief was highly complex:

• Multicam video shoot
• Tightly time constrained get-in and get-out
• Tight weight loading for LED
• Broadcast to China where an estimated 1bn people would watch the event aired through CCTV

The client needed a team that were confident, and could exceed the demands of the highly complex brief. They had confidence in the teams, staffing levels and solution that SFL proposed and awarded them the contract.

SFL provided a ten camera full HD multicam video shoot. The solution included Sony HDC-1500 camera channels in a variety of configurations – two jibs, steadicam, track, dolly and a number of fixed positions. Two 7m wide LED screens were flown left and right of the Organ. LED screens were specifically chosen due to their light and flexible nature – speeding up the get-in and get-out, reducing the power requirements, and meeting the weight loading limits.

SFL chose to work with an outside broadcast partner, World Television, to provide the final broadcast solution. The live mix was directed by Ian Rowan, director of X-Factor and Britain’s Got Talent. CCTV then used the live mix for broadcast. All camera feeds were recorded for CCTV who edited multiple programmes from the material captured. In addition to the mix for broadcast, World Television also created the camera mixes for the LED screens.

The two hour performance was mixed live and delivered for CCTV on the night. This content was then used for broadcast by CCTV in the following weeks. SFL provided the raw footage of the entire event to the client on HD cam.