At the height of the pandemic, organizations scrambled to shift their online activities. Events that were once in person moved to internet platforms, and soon live streaming became almost synonymous with tools like Zoom, Twitch, and Instagram Live. Creating a live stream was as simple as hitting “go live” on a smartphone. But the realities are more intricate for Kilam Media, streaming polished events like the quarterly music and arts festival Pique.
Live streaming a festival like Pique requires months of preparation, organizing a crew, managing multiple camera feeds in numerous rooms, audio levels, encoding and network stability—essential aspects that a typical audience or client doesn’t consider. There is a level of expertise needed to manage potential technical disasters while live, such as audio sync, dropped frames or poor lighting that most people who stream live on their cell phones won’t need to consider.
The Kilam Media livestream crew. Photo provided.
For professional live productions, the selection of equipment is critical to the success of the stream, from the cameras to the internet connection and the hundreds of buttons and dials in between. Equipment considerations often rely on the client’s budget, and lower budgets can jeopardize the reliability and polished look of the final product. There is a fine balance involved in delivering quality work within a limited budget.
For Kilam Media, a successful livestream starts with one of the most indispensable resources: the broadcast engineer. A broadcast engineer is the unsung hero of live events. They manage the technical complexities such as bitrates, encoding and latency, and fix issues live, to ensure a seamless show. The ability of a broadcast engineer to manage everything under the stress of being live is critical, as there are no second takes.
I’ve heard someone describe it as punk rock broadcasting, and it might be the best compliment I’ve ever heard. —Chris Lascelle, on Pique’s livestream
Working on Pique live streams with Chris Lascelle, a broadcast engineer with over 15 years of experience, gives Kilam Media confidence in knowing their live production will be successful. Chris Lascelle is no stranger to high-pressure broadcasts. You might have seen his work if you watched the Canadian Parliament on the news, press conferences from Ottawa, or visited many popular restaurants and stores in the city. He’s also the brains behind dozens of corporate event spaces, theatres and auditoriums in Tokyo, Munich, London, New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto.
The livestreaming control room. Photo provided.
For Lascelle, livestreams for Pique can be stressful, but it is a different, creative kind of stress, and Pique has become a canvas that allows him to experiment and try new things.
“For Pique, we often have one day to set up an entire broadcast system, consisting of eight cameras, two different stages, remote feeds, graphics, all that, then operate it for six or seven hours straight, and then put it all away,” says Lascelle. “The need for design elegance becomes paramount. The show couldn’t happen if the design were convoluted or overly complex. Paradoxically, it can be a complicated exercise of knowing exactly how everything works to make something simple that does so many things.”
Arts Court Studio during Pique. Photo provided.
“With the constraints of Pique, I’m really looking for any way that a piece of equipment can be used for its primary function and also a backup for another function; every critical piece of the puzzle has to have a backup plan in place,” Lascelle continues. “There is absolutely no time to figure out how to get around an unplanned problem. I’ve heard someone describe it as punk rock broadcasting, and it might be the best compliment I’ve ever heard.”
In today’s market, most companies are trying to get more value from their technology investments compared to five years ago, and Chris Lascelle has been able to take these lessons from Pique and implement them in larger spaces. There is no doubt that, regardless of the budget, if you’re planning a livestream production, having a broadcast engineer on your team will be one way to ensure that everything goes smoothly and you get the most for your money.
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