Mesmerized by the 3 camera screens shooting different aspects of the homecoming parade, technical director, Shea Southern, almost lost his focus on his job of beaming one of the camera screen on the live stream which the viewers were long awaiting for.
“It’s hard to keep yourself on your toes, and watching all the cameras rather than relaxing and just watching the stream,” Southern said. “I caught myself a couple of times watching the stream and knock myself out of it and be like no watch the cameras and not the stream.”
For the first time, the communications magnet multi-cam switch live streamed the homecoming parade, switching between 3 different cameras spread across Belt Line Rd held by the communications magnet students.
“I was a bit nervous, but I’m sort of used to it now,” said junior Jake Venton. “We do Eagle Eye, so we do that every twice a week and that’s live, and you’re still nervous there. But we’ve practiced long enough.”
Southern was in charge with switching the user’s view to different camera perspectives, watching all of the cameras and deciding which one has the best content to show.
“Whatever the people are seeing live, that’s my doing,” Southern said. “That puts a lot of pressure on me because I don’t have control, don’t have command [to] undo.”
The communications magnet has been live streaming some events since the spring of last year.
“One of my directors, Jake Venton, brought up the idea to me, and we’ve been talking about streaming other events,” director of magnet communication Brent Morton said. “Like last year, we streamed the final basketball game, we had about 700 people watching that.”
The communication magnet’s streaming service changed from Discover to Vimeo, which why they streamed the parade this year.
“We didn’t trust the streaming service to handle it the years before,” Morton said. “Vimeo is a very solid AV platform so we gave it a shot this year.”
Being outside for over 2 hours constantly holding the cameras for the viewers, Morton said that they have to make sure they are hydrated and not overworking themselves.
“Jake definitely sweated a lot, I know he did,” Morton said.” He sweated all of my hat”
The live stream was mostly a student run operation, with Morton looking over their shoulders spontaneously and being a backup for them.
“One of my students got tired holding the camera Jib,” Morton said. “I took over for her for the remaining period of time. ”
During the live stream, the sound system was not working properly throughout the event.
“That was what really bothered me,” Morton said.”But we can only do what we can do with that.”
Despite some problems arising throughout the live stream, Morton said that this will help the communication magnet in the future.
“The knowledge that we can do it now is an experience itself for the communication magnet,” Morton said. “This will also help them professionally too.”
The communication magnet plans on live streaming more events as the year goes on, this parade was the start.
“Hopefully by next year, this time when we have streamed another three or four or five events, it will get better when we get the word out a little quicker and that we have more viewership,” Morton said.
