“Remember the Ribbon: A Tribute to World AIDS Day” Powered by ATEM Mini Extreme ISO Live Production Switcher

Playbill’s “Remember the Ribbon: A Tribute to World AIDS Day” event took place on November 21st at the Sony Hall in New York to celebrate and commemorate those affected by HIV and AIDS. The event featured stories and songs along with appearances by several Broadway celebrities, including In the Heights and Hamilton star Javier Muñoz, Tony Award winners Lena Hall and Judith Light, virtual appearances from Billy Porter, and many more. Originally scheduled as an in-person event, the production pivoted into a hybrid reduced-capacity concert with a live-to-tape recording that was later streamed December 1 through December 3 on Playbill.com and its YouTube channel.

Michael J. Moritz, Jr., principal at Moritz Worldwide, Inc., was brought in to serve as director of the livestream production for the event. An Emmy and Tony Award winner and Grammy Nominee, Moritz has worked on numerous acclaimed Broadway productions including Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Big Fish, A Night with Janis Joplin, and more.

“I’m a record and broadcast producer that recently started doing many virtual event productions,” said Moritz. “We do quite a bit of on-location, theatrical-oriented television and live streaming programming and have worked with Playbill in the past. We were honored to be a part of this very special event.”

From the Broadway Stage to the Streams

In order to capture “Remember the Ribbon: A Tribute to World AIDS Day,” Moritz employed four cameras, which fed into an ATEM Mini Extreme ISO live production switcher for multicamera switching and ISO recording. He also used three Blackmagic Video Assist 7” 12G HDRs for monitoring and recording.

With eight HDMI inputs, the ATEM Mini Extreme ISO easily accommodated multicamera switching for four cameras and allowed Moritz and his team to capture a high-res ISO recording if further editing of the event was needed. Moritz streamed to a content delivery network (CDN) for redundancy and recorded with three Video Assist 7” 12G HDRs in ProRes, which was later used for the Playbill.com and YouTube streams.

“I was planning to do some edits on the fly with DaVinci Resolve Studio, but as it turned out, we didn’t need to do anything. It was nice that such a large event just went off without a hitch thanks to the equipment we had on hand,” noted Moritz. “A big advantage for us was the ATEM Mini Extreme ISO’s portability and scalability. It’s a perfect tool for the right size event. It was neat that we could live switch an event in a 1,200-seat room without having to bring tons of gear. To be able to come in and autonomously set up everything that we needed on a small table was just great.”

Broadcast-quality audio production was critical for the two-and-a-half-hour event, and Moritz relied on the ATEM Mini Extreme ISO’s built-in Fairlight audio mixer. “The audio tab means that I don’t need to bring a separate board just solely for watching the levels, using a compressor, adding a limiter, or blending in audience mics. The ability to do all that without the use of a separate piece of hardware is kind of amazing. I’ve done work where we’ll plug mics into the cameras and then just mix from that camera audio along with the board feed, so you get audience mic’ing. You have everything converging right over HDMI, which you can then mix on that page and send right back out. That’s the added benefit,” Moritz said.

When it came to audio, Moritz also took advantage of the XLR inputs on his Video Assist 7” 12G HDRs. “I have the ability to capture audio coming off my field recorder, or I can just plug directly into the Video Assist's XLR inputs, for example if we need to do a quick-and-dirty boom mic situation,” said Moritz. “It’s kind of like a little Swiss Army knife when we’re on jobs. We always just bring the Video Assist 7” 12G HDRs. We don’t know where they’ll end up, but they’re used a lot.”

Moritz noted how with the Video Assist 7” 12G HDR, he can always get clean feeds and uncompressed records when doing high profile events. “It also allows me to use it as a playback monitor for clients I’m working with, like a quick, in-the-field review tool,” he added. “We also preview LUTs on it immediately. We can shoot and expose for the LUT we start off with and then grade after the fact.”

The Ultimate Blackmagic Design Ecosystem

On many of Moritz’s productions, he relies on additional Blackmagic Design gear, including URSA Broadcast cameras, ATEM Streaming Bridge converters, Web Presenter HD streaming solution, and numerous converters. With streaming essential to today’s productions and events, Moritz has equipped himself with products to support whatever workflow is needed to get the job done.

Moritz concluded, “As we continue to get involved with more virtual productions, in addition to the many in-person events we work on, I’m confident the quality will always be top notch thanks to the Blackmagic Design gear we rely on.”