NEP, Extreme E enter “environmentally focussed” broadcast collaboration
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Editor
| 04 January 2021
As it gears up for its new electric car off-road racing series with a series of broadcast partners in the host countries, Extreme E has announced the technical production companies with whom it will work to provide the technology, expertise and global network to deliver what it says will be sustainable broadcasts.
Extreme E NEP 4 Jan 2021 lands
Extreme E aims to highlight the climate emergency that is affecting the whole world. By visiting these five destinations in 2021 – Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Greenland, Brazil and Patagonia – which have all been affected by the climate crisis, and the racing series will attempt to show the devastation caused by environmental issues, and encourage change, whilst leaving behind a long-lasting positive impact through its Legacy Programmes.

The five-event calendar starts in March 2021 in Saudi Arabia, before moving to Senegal in May, Greenland in August, Brazil in October and Patagonia in December. The series is ramping up to its start date and has recently completed its first group testing in Spain ahead of the opening race. The teams were able to run at full power for the first time to build up a greater understanding of the electric SUV, which they will race next year in some of the most remote corners of the planet.

In December 2020, Extreme E signed a broadcast deal Cosmote TV in Greece to go along with other relationships with the likes of the BBC (UK), Discovery (Europe), FOX Sports (US, Canada and the Caribbean), FOX Sports Asia (Southeast Asia), FOX Sports Australia, Globo (Brazil), ESPN (Latin America), ESPN Africa, Mediaset (Italy), Sony India (Indian subcontinent), TVNZ (New Zealand), RTM (Malaysia), Dubai Sports (Middle East), RDS (Canada), China Sports Zhibo.tv and Huya (China), RTL 7 (The Netherlands), ORF (Austria), Arena Sport (Balkans), MySports (Switzerland), Virgin Media Television (Ireland) and BTRC (Belarus).\

First among the technical production partners is NEP Group, a leading producer of live sports and entertainment, who with Aurora Media Worldwide and Extreme E have spent 18 months designing a technical solution that the partners say will reach the most remote locations whilst reducing the environmental impact across the entire production chain. NEP’s end-to-end solution includes flypack, remote production, crewing, satellite and fibre connectivity, edit, ingest, AR, GFX, display and projection, and specialist cameras including RF. The specialised flypack, designed to survive extreme temperatures and conditions, will be connected back into NEP’s new Ultra HD-ready centralised broadcast and media centre, which is located in central London. The production will make use of the centre’s connectivity, remote production galleries, remote replay, edit and live centre monitoring, all currently being built at the location.

NEP’s Netherlands based team in Hilversum has also developed new AR tools for drone tracking and in-car GFX, along with the innovative use of RF technologies to work around environments where cable runs have to be limited but still need to achieve maximum and resilient coverage from the cars. Avoiding either fixed-wing or helicopter RF solutions to remove some of the environmental impact, the company has achieved a ground-based system of remote IP RF links and integration of the coverage systems to maximise the number of feeds.

Combined with advanced drone technology, the AR GFX teams have worked with Extreme E and Aurora to develop live mapping and overlays of the diverse course from the drones providing viewers, said Extreme E, with a whole new experience in race time GFX AR overlays.
A significant challenge on this project was to design systems for deployment with limited crew numbers permitted on site. With NEP’s solutions, it has designed workflows and a system to support this smaller-sized team – all crew members are working as one team, supporting each other across disciplines from video to audio to cameras to rigging.

“After spending months working on these innovative broadcast solutions, many of which have never been used before, it has been great to see them all put into action at our recent test,” commented Dave Adey, head of broadcast and technology at Extreme E. “We are travelling to such remote locations with Extreme E, which means there will be no second chance when we get to site, so this test has proved essential, and seeing all the hard work in real life has been very gratifying. We can’t wait to go racing later this year and show the world Extreme E through one of the most innovative productions I’ve ever worked on.”

Simon Moorhead, managing director of NEP UK Broadcast Services, added: “We’re thrilled to be working with the Aurora team on the Extreme E racing series and having the opportunity to develop an integrated set of solutions to support these unique events. Between designing for Covid restrictions and being mindful of our impact to the environment, we needed to create a workflow that connected limited production crew and equipment on site to remote production hubs while shooting from some of the world’s most remote and difficult locations. All of our teams came together to meet these challenges head on.”