In May of 2020, Output was hired by the production company Embassy Row as a technical production partner to help develop an untitled show for Amazon, which later came to be known as Prime Rewind: Inside The Boys.
This was a unique production in a number of ways, not least of all because the shoot took place just a few months into the Covid-19 pandemic, which meant that the traditional style of production was off the table. Rather than brining our guests all to Los Angeles to appear on stage together, we had to figure out a way to bring our guests to the show remotely, from whatever location they happened to be in at the time of shooting. The only talent that was allowed on stage in LA was the show's host, Aisha Tyler.
In the early stages of pre production, we helped develop the overall workflow of the show, and bring in the key players that would eventually go on to run various aspects of the production during shooting, but as we got closer to shoot dates, our focus shifted to managing the inclusion of the various remote guests from around the world. We partnered with another production company, Vneck Media, to execute on the project.
The show was slated for 9 episodes with 4 remote guests per episode, for a total of 36 remote deployments taking place over the course of our 6 day shoot schedule. Shoot locations spanned the globe - including locations around the US, Canada, New Zealand, Israel, and the UK.
In addition to managing the technical side of these remote deployments, we worked with the executive producers in pre production to develop the overall look from a creative perspective. The first thing that we had to tackle came from Amazon’s desire to avoid showing talent sitting in their homes. The Boys is a highly stylized and gritty show, so having our guests sitting in a beautiful residential setting was not going to fit. We decided to create 6 unique backgrounds that we would print and then set up behind talent for each shoot. We ended up shooting a number of camera tests in pre production to determine what the best material to print the backgrounds on would be, how to light our setups, and define the spatial relationship between camera, subject and background.
We needed to provide high quality audio and video feeds from our remote guests, with the ability for the guests and our host to talk to each other in real time, all while limiting, or in some cases entirely eliminating contact between our camera crews on the ground and talent.
To do this we deployed camera carts using the Canon C300 that could be built by our crews outside of each talent’s home, and then wheeled in and set up by talent themselves. Our team of technical directors would work with the camera crews and then talent to make sure everything was set up properly before shooting. Each cart included the camera, microphones, lighting, and video conferencing laptop (the produced settled on Skype as the conferencing platform of choice) in a self contained package.
Once the workflow was defined, we provided workflow and physical setup diagrams for our camera crews to reference during their setups.
Because we were working with high profile talent, we needed to minimize the time commitment required of them for these shoots. We had about 1.5 to 2 hours before shooting to get all 4 guests for the upcoming episode ready to roll cameras. Being just a small part of a much larger, multi million dollar production, any delays in getting our feeds up could have ripple effects that would affect other departments. We would work with each talent directly through Skype and then pass them off to the broadcast team when ready. While rolling, the broadcast team would stream a low latency multiview showing each of our guest feeds, as well as the show program, so that we could monitor everything in real time. Once we wrapped on an episode, our camera crews would collect the carts and deliver the media to the post house for editing (in person if in LA, or via a shipped hard drive, or file sharing solution).
All episodes of Prime Rewind: Inside The Boys are available on Amazon Prime. You can also view the first episode on Youtube by clicking this link.
