REMOTE LIGHTING –
EVEN AROUND THE WORLD
Here are the tools we offer and the services we recommend
for working remotely or connecting multiple locations.
MAKING THE CONNECTION
the power of THe-BRIDGE
Lighting consoles – and other entertainment lighting devices in sound and video – have always been designed around working on a local network to talk to other devices. They don’t really understand the concept of the wider internet.
To connect these devices around the world, you need a way of creating a ‘virtual’ local network.
You could do that using standard commercial VPN (Virtual Private Network) devices – but they require knowledge at both ends, and good luck with getting technical support understand ‘sACN’ or ‘ArtNet’ when things don’t work.
theBRIDGE provides an easy, reliable solution.
Put one in each location (there can be more than two locations), connect to the internet, connect to your devices and it’s as if you’re all in the same building – regardless of where you are in the world.
It’s been used with all the major console types (Eos, MA, Avo). Plus this is not just for lighting: audio, video or anything else will also work seamlessly across theBRIDGE.
We can supply theBRIDGE to your production.
And for connecting some countries (particularly the US) we can work with partner organisations to supply the remote BRIDGE unit locally, to minimise shipping.
EYES AROUND THE WORLD
THE CHALLENGE OF HIGH QUALITY, REAL TIME STREAMING
Once you’ve got your consoles connected, you need to see what you’re lighting! Sadly that’s not just a matter of streaming a video to YouTube. You need a good quality image, not compressed, not distorting the colours. Zoom won’t work – it’s optimised around one talking head.
And you need to be able to see it in as close to real time as possible – you don’t want to turn the encoder then wait ten seconds to see the light move. Which means YouTube streaming won’t work, nor will the other streaming protocols we’ve tried – they all have a delay, from a couple of seconds to ten or more.
We found and have now used across multiple projects an alternative system called StreamLabs (formerly MelonApp). Great quality image transmission (and audio transmission, too), close to zero delay, very reasonably priced. Set it up yourself, or have us set it up for you, and the person running the console (and anyone else who needs to) will be able to see exactly what’s going on.
CHOSE YOUR CAMERA
which might not actually be a camera…
Even the best streaming service is not good without a camera.
Pro or semi-pro cameras give the best results as long as there’s someone at the other end who knows how to set the camera up, and if you have the right interface to connect it to a computer to handle the streaming. The interface device is surprisingly important to the final image quality.
If you don’t have access to that equipment or just need to get going quickly, recent iPhones or iPads give great results with little or no set-up. Connect them to a computer (we use MacMinis running the Camo software for this) and you have a versatile, easy to use solution that’ll give you a great representation of what the lighting’s doing.
It may be you want to cameras, say one with a view from downstairs, one from upstairs. Even then a particular challenge of lighting remotely is that you can’t just go peek around the corner. We suggest having an iPad on site that someone can take to be your eyes on stage if necessary. (This is also the only device we’d connect via WiFi; everything else works better with a wire!)
COMMS
because we don’t work alone, even when we have to be on our own
While Zoom isn’t great for streaming lighting, it is great for comms – everyone has it now, everyone knows how to work it now. We tend to think of Zoom sessions as being like rings in a standard comms system – so have one for private chats between LD and programmer, another for wider chats to the team. The only drawback is that in standard mode you can only have one Zoom call per device – so have one running on your laptop, another on your iPad. Or there are ways around this that we can talk you through.
For more complex shows, we recommend Unity Comms, either running on its own or interfaced to the existing comms system in the venue. That lets all of the comms rings be accessible to anyone with an iPhone (and the password) from anywhere in the world. Your electrician can even keep an ear out for problems while grabbing a coffee…
infrastructure
plugging it all in and making it work…
The magic behind all of this is the internet, so you’ll need a reasonable connection to it. The speed you need depends on how many people are remote working, but if it’s just a lighting console link over theBRIDGE and some streaming to see the stage it doesn’t have to be super-fast. Lighting consoles we’ve even made work over 4G mobile phone connections…
Ideally, though, you want as much of your system to be connected by real ethernet cables rather than WiFi to minimise latency and other issues. WiFi is useful for connecting an iPad as a mobile camera, but guard the access code to stop everyone jumping on that network.
IMPROVISE!
BECAUSE EVERY SHOW IS DIFFERENT!
The needs of every show are different – particularly as remote lighting is often forced upon a show when someone tests positive, rather than being a planned way of working (-being there to light the show is still best!).
So a remote lighting designer might need to see console data (cue lists, channel levels) remotely but not actually interact with the console. In which case you don’t need theBRIDGE but just need to see the console screens. For Joseph we created a system that used the OBS software to combine the stage video feed and the console cue and level displays to then stream to the remote designer, with a duplicate display in the theatre so programmer and designer could be sure they were looking at the same thing.
For the 2022 Olivier Awards it was pre-lighting that was interrupted, so we streamed the WYG display, the grandMA cue display and audio to the LD.
You won’t know what you need until you need it. When you need it, we’re happy to help you figure it out.
(But consider: is it worth having theBRIDGE in a rack on tour so you’re ready to work remotely if the worst happens?)
EVERYONE ELSE
because it’s often not just lighting that can’t get there!
Often the way of the world now means it’s not just lighting that can’t get there – lockdowns, visa issues or other travel restrictions, with different rules from travellers from different countries, may mean lots of people working remotely.
All of these techniques and technologies are useful to everyone, whether it’s a shared high quality stream, recorded streams for review across different time zones, comms, high quality audio feeds or more.
GET IN TOUCH
you’ve got more important things to be doing than worrying about all this
We can supply theBRIDGE, to get your remote sites connected immediately and reliably.
Or if you want someone to just deal with this for you, get in touch and leave it to us.