Patrol Base PBTV Live Stream Build
From a small daily live stream on Instagram to a multi camera production streamed out to many locations.
From a small daily live stream on Instagram to a multi camera production streamed out to many locations.
Patrol Base has a long standing reputation in the Airsoft retail community for outstanding quality and service. There is simply no other retailer that is able to provide the level of service that Patrol Base has consistently been able to provide for their loyal customer base. To go with this, when Patrol Base wanted to step up their daily Live Streaming, quality was at the heart of it. Although we were with the project from conception, to design to implementation we are going to focus on one aspect for this case study, the Live Production setup.
Project Name: Live Production Setup
Timeline: non
Scope:
Challenges:
Before this Patrol Base had only gone live via a phone and instagram live, this system would need to be managed by as few staff as possible while hugely upgrading quality without sacrificing the audience participation via comments.
Research & Strategy
We began with the software, it may seem a simple challenge to overcome but finding the right match wasn’t as cut and dry. At first we tried using vanilla OBS but unfortunately we found this to be far too limiting and instead moved over to vMix. We had vMix experience prior to this project but by no means to this scale. After bringing in some placeholder assets we were sure vMix would be the right fit,
Design Process
We then moved onto the design stage for the assets that would really bring the Patrol Base brand into the production. We noticed that patrol base had used hexagon patterns in the past in their feature banners and decided to bring this into 3D by animating a series of hexagon patterns.
We made a few assets that at their core were designed to work together. The idea being that we could have a loop video at the start, this focuses on individual hexagons and very close up elements, then when the production is ready to go, they can hit one button and the vMix shortcuts we set up would blend the clips together making a seamless opening scene, all held together with impressive sound design. The end result is almost completely seamless regardless of when the production team decides to start the intro.
Collaboration
Working within someone else's brand can be daunting, especially when working on something like this where you can easily go too far outside of the brand guides. In our case here we worked with the Patrol Base media department to ensure the design never fell outside of acceptable levels and by the end we came up with such an impressive scene, our hexagon pattern is used all over their new showroom.
Final Deliverables:
The Live Production we created for Patrol Base is still used to this day with it now being ported over to a new studio setup with our help. The Patrol Base team has done a great job continuing to develop what we built.
How We Solved the Problem
The system we built directly addressed all of Patrol Bases concerns going into this project, they are able to compete with other large scale Live Podcast productions, they are still able to keep comments at centre stage and the quality of their stream, now supporting multiple cameras and graphics has taken them not just past their competitors, but into another league entirely.
Unique Features
Most of this setup, although run through vMix was custom designed for Patrol Base. The project setup within vMix was a challenge but well with it and some of the more custom projects we have done with them for one off shows and series have been a lot of fun.
Quantifiable Results:
Patrol Base is able to show off new products to an even more dedicated audience, keep in contact with their customer base and stay well ahead of the nearest competition.
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