Accidental Theatre creates dynamic live streaming content with LiveU
Details
Faye Sutton
| 19 January 2022
Belfast-based charitable organisation Accidental Theatre, a provider of creative opportunities and performance space to performing artists, has turned to LiveU's multi-camera solution to provide dynamic, live streaming capabilities, extending the reach of online performances.
LiveU Accidental Building 19Jan2022

Accidental Theatre began in 2011 as a touring arts company and evolved into taking over and converting venues into performance spaces. In 2017, it took over the current space it occupies, an old bank, and redeveloped it as a “venue for people to try things and to grow what they do,” explained Richard Lavery, artistic director.

Lavery added: “We had always designed this building to be very internet accessible. Prior to the pandemic we were already streaming a couple of shows a month, usually in quite a low-key way, in terms of both promotion and the technology we used. Then the pandemic hit and we, of course, had to close every in-person aspect of our business. When we realised this would be for longer than we initially thought, we started to reach out to festival organisers, other artists and businesses to explain what we were planning to do in terms of live streaming and new possibilities.”

Lavery and his team created a small control room and editing space in the theatre and two small studios in what were the bank vaults. They also installed a Blackmagic Atem production system and moved from a two-camera setup to a six-camera, including multiple PTZ cameras.

Lavery said: “External requests grew, and we were increasingly working not only in our venue but also from other venues and outside spaces around the city. Sometimes this meant multiple spaces in a day. We knew we needed a system that would allow us to do all of this without the client worrying about live streaming reliability and audiences knowing that the stream would be high-quality and reliable. The system also had to be compact and portable. That’s where the LU800 comes in.”

LiveU's LU800 production-level field unit is at the core of the live streaming setup and is connected to three PTZ cameras that can either be controlled on-site or remotely from the control room back at the Accidental Theatre venue. On top of that they use an audio interface that takes a mix out of the desk – or they can build their own mix – into an audio embedder into one of the camera feeds that then comes back to a LiveU server in the control room where they do the final mix. They have one or two operators onsite and one or two in the control room. The LiveU Solo is used to provide ultimate redundancy for the final stream.

Malcolm Harland, country manager, UK, LiveU, said: “This is a really interesting use of our technology, opening up new creative and revenue possibilities for performers and performance spaces. We’re very impressed with the way Richard and his team have approached this and developed their system. And, of course, the fact that they can create such exciting content so reliably really says it all.”