MixOne Sound & Cinema's Kevin Garcia Talks Hybrid Streaming with Live Bands

In mid-December I spoke with MixOne Sound & Cinema Video Partner & Director of Film Kevin Garcia about the tentative return of live music as the pandemic continues, the challenges of streaming shows with hybrid (in-person and online) audiences, and the gear and techniques MixOne uses to deliver a unique experience to their online viewers. When I first interviewed Kevin in May 2020, MixOne Sound had just recently come off the road, their adventures with Rock Nation and elsewhere on the festival circuit forced into hiatus by the global pandemic. The crew had just begun the pivot to livestreaming audience-less shows, deploying their array of camera, switching, and recording gear from Blackmagic Design in a new state-of-the-art soundstage, and renewing their industry contacts to put their new business model into play.

Live music with in-person audiences has come back in fits and starts over the intervening 18 months. In that time, Garcia's crew has worked with Rock Nation and Danny Wimmer, done shows and hybrid events with the likes of Jimmy Eat World, Korn, Brockhampton, Foster the People, Seether, and others, many of them in partnership with "Elevated Digital Experiences" producer Moment House. Rhe emergence of hybrid events as a new standard for bringing music to fans who are able and to those unable to gather in the same place to hear their favorite bands, as Garcia says, is likely to continue, and opportunities abound for versatile live streaming crews like MixOne's to show these concerts to their streaming audiences from angles they might never see when watching in a venue, no matter how good their seats.

Much of what enables the MixOne crew to give their online viewers these experiences is the work they've been doing with live bands long before the pandemic or streaming itself came into play for them. But Garcia also credits much of what they're able to accomplish to the gear they use, which was already fairly Blackmagic-centric when he and I spoke in 2020, with several URSA Mini Pro 12Ks in their kit (as well as ATEM 1 M/E Production Studio 4K switchers, Video Assist 7"monitor/recorders, and more), but since then Kevin says they've incorporated Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pros into their workflow, which have helped them to get shots they never have before. 

"I'll use the Pockets almost like in a way you'd use like a GoPro," he says. "They're not much bigger than a phone, as far as a footprint goes. You can hide them a bit." On the Pentatonix: The Evergreen Experience "worldwide digital performance" show MixOne did at the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville just before our interview, he says, "we had 10 cameras: six URSA bodies and four Pocket Cinema Camera bodies [Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro and Pocket Cinema Camera 4K), four URSA Mini Pro 12Ks, and two URSA Broadcast G2s, which were super helpful, because I put them in areas where the light was a little more volatile. They're a lot better in low light, so I can shade 'em up or crank 'em up and down in real time to quickly to compensate just for lighting, being all over the place. And the URSA Mini Pro 12Ks just look really, really nice. I don't film often in 12K because most of our streams get delivered in 1080, but the sensor just looks better and it's sharper filming at 4K and 8K and then using that to get two angles out of one. Instead of 10 cameras, to the viewer it looks like we have 15."

As for how long he sees the current hybrid trend in live music lasting, Garcia says, "I think we're going to be living in a hybrid model for quite some time, especially with international travel. COVID will be with us for a while. If you're living with someone who's high risk you, but you still want to go to a concert, you're not gonna want to go, but streaming gives a way to do it now. It's going to enable a lot of people to still be at events in a safe way that they couldn't have done before, and if it's presented correctly, it can be just as fun."