September 2021. Feral answers a late call from industry cooperative Fashion District on social media to step in and provide streaming services.

The ask

Supply five live cams for a 7pm, 30-minute stream of a full fashion, dance and music performance to Facebook with opening titles and pre-recorded VTs. The showcase was a tightly choreographed party right in the heart of the London Fashion District, celebrating East London’s extraordinary fashion talent as part of the inaugural Fashion District Festival celebration of sustainability and innovation in Stratford.

The challenge

Navigate the complexities of safely accessing and filming at a busy city location – in this case the incredible Pavilion building at International Quarter London in Stratford – and organise the shoot in less than five days. Then set up, rig the shoot and edit a title sequence and two VT’s, all in a few hours before the live broadcast.

Feral’s answer

Arriving on site at 11am gave our crack team of six (rigger, broadcast engineer, director, PTZ operator, shooting editor and producer) eight hours to set up our cameras, broadcast van and editing suite. During which time we shot the rehearsals and used that footage to create the opening titles, while also shooting and editing opening and closing VT’s with show director Lee Lapthorne and sustainable fashion campaigner Alice Aedy.

The challenges

Coming in late to a project like this meant fitting in our infrastructure on top of already-laid staging, sound and image kit. This meant a lot of paperwork, health and safety manoeuvring and box-ticking, all expertly navigated by Feral’s production team. On arrival we discovered we hadn’t been granted the right access to get the OB truck next to the stage. This meant being 100 metres away rather than the five we had planned for, meaning more time laying cables and a lot of extra cable protection (and even more H&S!). Three hours in we still had no power and no connectivity. Unfazed, we managed to resolve all the issues. It all looked good to go until the lighting engineers made their final tweaks, only for us to discover we would have no ambient lighting during the performance. This would mean some clever live-cutting and a lot of closeups.

The result

The show went out without a hitch and the client was thrilled; as much with our unwavering calm during the day as with the end product itself.