Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1335010
58 W I N T E R 2 0 2 1 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y GROUPINGS In order to enable various groupings of nominees needed during the show, each nominee had to be on a separate Zoom link. To do this, a bank of more than 120 PC's had to be set up and managed. The engineering team that managed the incoming feeds built a switching system that would allow them to group and re-group various nominees and categories as needed. As nominees logged in at showtime, those 120 logins were routed into what production referred to as a "waiting room." In the waiting room, all the nominees could see a live feed from the show, as well as messaging of which awards were upcoming, so people knew when they were about to be on deck. Once a category was coming up in the next scene of the show, those nominees were then routed from the waiting room to a virtual green room for their category. In their category green room, the nominees for that category could now see and talk to each other, see a live feed of the show in progress, and communicate with a producer in that room prepping them for their upcoming award. Jimmy Kimmel could also jump in during commercial breaks and talk with each group of nominees. Nominees never have the chance to connect with all their fellow nominees and the host in such an intimate way prior to the winner reveal. Guy shares, "The conversations between nominees, which the viewing audience never saw, were some of the most special moments." This was a good "unintended consequence" of a virtual show. MIXING SETUP To simplify and condense the number of faders that Tom would have to manage at any one time, engineering created and routed Tom four groups of feeds for the next four upcoming awards. Each group represented a category, and that category would have from five to nominee going though setup, lighting, camera angles, and so on. As EP Guy Carrington pointed out, "The jobs of lighting, set design, cameraman, IT, and Sound A2's most often fell to the kids and teenagers in the family household." CONNECTING The next major decision was what platform and software to use for audio/video connection. The team looked at a lot of options, including those with sophisticated remote features that would give the technical team remote control of things like color balance, camera resolutions, and audio routing. But in the end, it all came down to what they knew would work for these nominees. The bottom line was that most nominees were not comfortable with anything other than Zoom. Many of them being so non-technical, they feared that making any changes to their laptops and iPhones could (in their minds) jeopardize their setup for upcoming meetings for both family and business. So, Zoom it was! The tech team, along with Tom Holmes, began to dig into Zoom to see what options it offered for the best audio quality. Zoom has features for things like background noise suppression and echo cancelation which, though they work well for their intended purpose, do have an effect on the overall audio quality. What they hoped for was to get as raw a feed as possible, what Zoom calls "original audio." This would allow the team to use the better mixing console tools to manipulate the mix. While working with Zoom, they did learn how to shut off much of the Zoom processing, but that caused its own set of problems. Attempting to do auto mixing and other processing of the Zoom feeds in the truck console caused significant latency issues with the Zoom video feed. In the end, they reset the Zoom options back to default and Tom worked from there. Lead Actor in a Comedy Series nominee Anthony Anderson checking the prompter feed. Photo: © 2020 American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.