BroadcastPro ME November 2022

ON THE FUTURE

CNBC Arabia forges ahead with ambitious upgrades and launches across its operations in the Middle East

Experience the Next.

Welcome

One of the most rewarding things about being part of the awards jury for so many years, whether it’s for IBC or the BroadcastPro ME Awards, is that I am privy to some of the most innovative projects and solutions within the industry from across the world.

For the IBC Innovation Awards, we witness some truly great innovations from across the globe, while the BroadcastPro ME Awards has given me access to some outstanding works that emerge from the Middle East. Over the years the number of regional entries has multiplied, but more importantly the quality of the projects has been mind-blowing, especially on the content side of the business.

Whether it is fiction, documentaries, reality TV shows, animations … the variety of the entries this year, the slickness of the production and the image quality are all on a par with international standards.

With the rise of streaming platforms in the region and everyone competing for eyeballs, investment in originals has shot through the roof. Producers are therefore experimenting with plot lines and pushing the boundaries with their subject matter. The content production entries were so good this year that the number of

dedicated categories did not do them justice, so we decided to expand our content categories. Watch out for the surprise at our awards gala.

In the meantime, our keynote panel at the BroadcastPro Summit will have producers and senior executives from the commissioning side to shed light on which way the market is trending, what productions and subject matter are attracting viewers and so on. We will continue to have our traditional tech panels, our OTT discussions and the CEO special with which we conclude every year.

For those who haven’t registered yet to attend the BroadcastPro Summit on November 8 at Westin Mina Seyahi, this may be your last chance. Attendance is free but we are bursting at the seams with registrations and may have to close earlier than we planned.

Prior registration online is mandatory to attend. https:// broadcastpromeawards.com/ register. Get in there now.

Vijaya Cherian, Editorial Director

400 Upgrade your sound.

Sometimes, good just isn’t good enough. Enter the MKE 400, an on-camera shotgun microphone that combines portability and performance and sheds a whole new light on the way we capture audio for our video. Features that were traditionally accessories—like a windscreen and shock-mount—are now fully integrated and perform better than ever, freeing up space in your camera bag and on top of your camera itself.

www.sennheiser.com/mke-400

Inside this issue

05 NEWS

BeIN Media Group appoints SMC as exclusive advertising partner; industry veterans launch Rise Studios; Ghallab Mohamed joins BSS as GM; Warner Bros. Discovery and Intigral launch gameshow; Red Sea film festival updates; and more

16 FILMING GOLD DIGGER

Italian feature film secures funding from Emirati investor

18 A NEWS LEASE OF LIFE

CNBC Arabia recently migrated its Dubai facility to HD, revamped its digital offerings, made cloud investments and now has ambitious studio launches planned across the Middle East. The network's CEO and CTO share details exclusively with BroadcastPro ME

26 THE POWER OF VFX

As the global VFX market grows, Samer Asfour looks at how VFX and CG can help elevate brands

28 CRAFTING A NEW LOOK WITH BLACKMAGIC

Ugandan drama series Kyaddala uses URSA Mini Pro 4.6K and Resolve to enhance its storyline

32 LIVING ON THE EDGE

Since Bob Lyons joined Edgio as CEO, the company's numbers have risen dramatically. Lyons shares the secrets to Edgio's new success

36 VIRTUAL PRODUCTION – 6

What can lighting do for virtual production? Everything, says Matthew Collu

40 GUEST COLUMN

John Mailhot looks at the creative challenges of HDR

FILMING GOLD DIGGER IN DUBAI

BeIN Media Group appoints SMC as exclusive advertising partner

BeIN Media Group has appointed Riyadh-based media representation firm SMC as its exclusive MENA advertising partner. BeIN Sports signed an agreement with SMC for all its channels, including coverage of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. The agreement was signed at beIN’s MENA headquarters in Doha, in the presence of Yousef Al-Obaidily, Group CEO of BeIN Media Group, and Mohammed bin Abdulelah Al-Khuraiji, Chairman of SMC. Mohammad Al-Subaie, CEO of beIN MENA, said: “We are

pleased to partner with SMC at such an exciting time for beIN, as we prepare for the start of the world’s largest sporting event, the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022. The agreement

is not only commercially significant but will also enable advertisers to reach a huge audience who are tuned into beIN’s various channels within the MENA region, through a

leading media sales agency. This agreement is just one of many success stories which have been announced this year, with more to come.”

Khalid Waleed Alkhudair, CEO of SMC, added: “This agreement with beIN provides us with an opportunity to implement SMC’s strategy of flexible and effective advertising and marketing services. We plan to utilise our top-of-the-line service models, which comprise the latest in ad systems in line with the global developments in the industry.”

Vice Media Group and its creative agency

Virtue Worldwide have announced several senior hires in the Middle East.

Tarek Khalil has been promoted to the position of Regional Managing Director, Vice Arabia, MEA, bringing with him a wealth of experience across the region in running awardwinning agencies and securing and sustaining

large creative accounts.

Carla Dabis has been appointed as Commercial Director, Vice, MEA.

Vice Media Group has also appointed Joseph Aquilina as Senior Director and Head of Experiential across MEA, charged with leveraging the group’s expertise in engaging with youth and driving growth across the experiential offering of Virtue.

MBC Group’s streaming platform Shahid and Saudi General Entertainment Authority (GEA) have collaborated to launch a new digital channel in Saudi Arabia. Imagine will be available as an add-on service within the Shahid VIP and VIP Sports packages. It will specialise in broadcasting concerts, artistic shows, entertainment programmes and sporting events. It will also broadcast livestreams of events and concerts from Riyadh Season and Jeddah Season, as well as recordings of past shows.

Shahid Ultimate package subscribers will automatically gain access to Imagine after the channel’s launch.

Evision and Abu Dhabi investment and holding company ADQ have completed the acquisition of a majority stake of 57% in Starzplay Arabia. The consortium, in which Evision owns a 66.7% share, will pay up to $130m in cash and kind, including a component linked to an earn-out. StarzPlay will use the investment for new sports content and originals from the Middle East.

Vice Media Group bolsters leadership team in Middle East

Saudi Arabia’s GEA and Shahid launch new digital channel

Evision and ADQ complete acquisition of majority stake in StarzPlay

Executives from beIN Media Group and SMC.

Tarek Khalil. Carla Dabis.

Joseph Aquilina.

Former OSN and Warner Bros. Discovery execs launch Rise Studios

Three well-known industry veterans have joined forces to launch Rise Studios, a company that will invest in regional production houses and local talent with the aim to create world-class productions that can be distributed on both regional and international platforms. The brainchild of Emad Morcos, former OSN Chief Content and Commercial Officer; Amanda Turnbull, previous GM at Warner Bros. Discovery MEA and Turkey; and Amel Farag, former Head of Content Commercial Strategy at OSN, Rise Studios is based in Dubai Media City and will take care of the commercial, distribution and legal aspects of the productions they support so producers and talent can focus on honing their craft.

“We have been working on this for the last 18 months,” Rise Studios CEO and co-founder Amanda Turnbull told BroadcastPro ME. “This is a new approach in the region and is unique since it gives our production partners an equity share in the bigger studio business. We invest in companies that have successful Arabic production track records and already work with the likes of MBC, OSN, StarzPlay and Netflix. We will accelerate their growth to take more of their productions to

regional and international platforms.

“We have partnered with Great Mountain Partners (GMP), a US-based media and entertainment investor for this venture. They have immediate access to an ecosystem of IP producers from across North America and Europe. They have a very long-term view and that’s why they fit the needs of this market.”

Rise has already invested in companies across Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Beirut, the UAE and the US. These include Egyptian scripted series and movie specialist Partner Pro and advertising creative house ASAP, headed by film director Sherif Arafa and Amin El Masri; Lebanon and UAE-based factual reality specialist Different Productions, helmed by Mazen Laham; Watan Network, led by Bassel Khair; and Omar Hussein’s Black Typhoon, which has been funded for the specific development of original content in Saudi Arabia.

Partner Pro produced the regional hit Finding Ola and is in pre-production for a second season of this popular Netflix show. Different Productions launched Dubai Bling on Netflix on October 27, having successfully launched Chopped with Dubai TV and Say Yes to the Dress with Discovery and StarzPlay Arabia. Watan Network is one of the largest

multi-channel networks in the Arab world, with over 5bn combined views monthly and 14bn watch time minutes per month on YouTube, Facebook and Snap. Black Typhoon is an established Saudi Arabian producer whose founding team has over 10 years of experience creating content for platforms including UTurn, OSN and MBC.

Rise Studios leverages its funding to create owned intellectual property (IP) that reflects the regional zeitgeist and delivers the type of content that audiences are looking for. With the backing of Great Mountain Partners (GMP), already part of the expansion journeys for acclaimed media groups such as Concord, Confluential Films, AiMi and A24, the Rise Studios team is confident it will be able to help raise the profile of regional content and talent.

“We believe that stories can be told differently and champion rich regional narratives that resonate locally and travel globally, leaving lasting impressions. Through collective commercial expertise and data intelligence, we pinpoint the right content for the right platforms while discovering, supporting and giving regional talent the recognition that it deserves,” commented Emad Morcos, Chairman of Rise Studios.

Amanda Turnbull, CEO and co-founder of Rise Studios.

Emad Morcos, Chairman & co-founder.

Amel Farag, Non-Executive Director and co-founder.

BeIN signs broadcast rights deal with Asian Football Confederation

The Asian Football Confederation and BeIN Media Group have signed a longterm deal covering AFC competitions in MENA. For the initial 2022-2024 period, the agreement grants beIN Sports exclusive rights to all AFC competitions in certain MENA territories, excluding Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iran and Iraq. In addition, beIN Sports has non-exclusive broadcast rights in Chad, Djibouti, Mauritania, Somalia and Sudan. For the 2025-2028 and 2029-2032 cycles, beIN has exclusive rights to all AFC competitions across 17 MENA countries and nonexclusive rights in six MENA countries.

Through this partnership, beIN Sports will showcase the new AFC rights on its

Ghallab Mohamed joins BSS as General Manager

Broadcast & Studio Solutions (BSS) has appointed Ghallab Mohamed as GM for the MEA region with a focus on all broadcast, media, telco and A/V business, including conventional broadcast, filebased media solutions (FBMS) and BIT, RF transmission, satellite transmission solutions, DSNGs, IPTV, OTT and headend solutions.

BSS CEO Tareq Eid said: “Ghallab’s appointment puts the company on track, he will be in charge of managing

Indian actress Nitu Chandra Srivastava has launched Champaran Talkies Studios FZ LLC in Abu Dhabi, an extension of her Mumbaibased production house. The aim is to produce international movies that appeal to a global audience. To achieve this, she plans to set up an all-women team of above-the-line talented technicians who can help produce quality content.

“With this all-women team at Champaran Talkies Studios, I aim to provide better access for women in the field of movie-making and production. I believe that I can find the right talent from different ethnicities for my projects owing to UAE’s international integration and presence of 200+ nationalities in one space.”

the operations, systems and professional services to expand BSS’ Broadcast, Media Services & System Solutions business further, develop and support their growth strategy in the Middle East and Africa.”

Mohamed has more than 25 years of media industry experience working inside projects, system sales, system integration, managed professional services, manufacturing and the company’s full operations.

Warner Bros. Discovery and Intigral launch gameshow

Warner Bros. Discovery and Intigral collaborated last month to launch a new six-part reality gameshow, Dare to Take Risks, starring Arab influencers Amy Roko, Hadeel Marei and Maha Jaafar. It follows their journey as they traverse culturally rich and iconic destinations in KSA, the UAE and

Egypt. From conquering mountains to jumping from heights and diving 50 metres underwater, their friendship and resilience are put to the ultimate test. Shot in some of the MENA region’s landmarks, the series champions the wonders of the Arab world, taking viewers on an adventure journey.

Evision launches Emasala Simply South movie channel

Evision and Simply South, an online streaming platform with South Indian content, have launched Emasala Simply South, a trilingual movie channel for UAE viewers.

Owned and operated by evision, the media & entertainment arm of e& life, it will showcase the latest movies in Tamil, Malayalam and Telugu as early as four weeks after theatrical release. It will focus on Tamil movies five days a week, with Malayalam on Saturdays and Telugu on Tuesdays.

Evision CEO Olivier Bramly said: “Currently, a large subscriber base of eLife TV in the UAE is from the Indian subcontinent, and the vast majority of those are from the south of India, mainly watching Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada content.

The partnership with Simply South will give our viewers a flavour of the best and latest content from the greatest in the film industry.”

Dare to Take Risks will see three Arab influencers traverse culturally rich destinations in the Arab world.

Simply South founder Anish Wadhwa added: “We are honoured to collaborate with evision and bring unparalleled entertainment to the Indian diaspora.”

Indian actress launches Abu Dhabi production house

Ghallab Mohamed.

Red Sea Film Festival picks seven classics for Treasures category

Red Sea International Film Festival has announced the seven films that will be part of its Red Sea: Treasures section. The second edition of RedSeaIFF will take place at the Ritz-Carlton in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, from December 1-10, 2022.

Antoine Khalife, Director of Arab Programmes & Film Classics of RedSeaIFF, said: “Red Sea: Treasures is a celebration of some of the iconic and widely acclaimed cinematic storytelling ever to grace the screen. I’m thrilled that through the Red Sea Film Festival Foundation, we

Film AlUla, a film agency that promotes and supports film and TV production in the county of AlUla in northwest Saudi Arabia, has strengthened its ties with RedSeaIFF as a strategic sponsor of this year’s edition. Film AlUla will present the Audience Award and the Best Saudi Film Award, each with a $50,000 prize. The Audience Award is vote-based and audience-

driven, and designed to encourage festivalgoer engagement with the films. The Best Saudi Film Award, voted on by the audience at the festival, celebrates creative Saudi talent and innovative Saudi works that are faithful to their identity, heritage and cultural depth, boasting originality in their presentation.

AlUla locations, featuring some of the most dramatic

have been able to restore two Egyptian classics which have been meticulously restored for a new generation of audiences to enjoy.”

The line-up includes Bend it Like Beckham, La Grande Illusion, Sambizanga, Stranger than Paradise, Lion of the Desert, Khali Balak Min Zouzou and Gharam Fil Karnak. The last two are Egyptian classics – Khali Balak Min Zouzou is directed by Hassan Al-Imam (1972), and Gharam Fil Karnak by Ali Reda (1967).

Both have been restored and will be screened as part of the programme.

landscapes in the world, have welcomed a slate of local, regional and international productions. Productions most recently shot in AlUla include Ric Roman Waugh’s upcoming action thriller Kandahar, starring Gerard Butler; the Russo brothers’ intense drama Cherry, starring Tom Holland; and Saudi filmmaker Tawfik Alzaidi’s debut feature Norah, featuring an all-Saudi cast.

Since opening for production in 2020, Film AlUla has been developing a film-friendly ecosystem and is currently leading the development of a landmark infrastructure project which will see the first phase comprised of two purpose-built stateof-the-art film studios.

Red Sea festival announces films for Red Sea: Shorts

The Red Sea: Shorts competition has announced the first selection of 13 short films. It offers filmmakers from diverse backgrounds and different countries across the region the opportunity to present new narratives around life in the Arab world that are both innovative and authentic.

The slate of shorts, many of which are world premieres, celebrates the best short filmmaking from across the region.

The films are Sisters of the Rotation, Warsha, In the Long Run, On My Father’s Grave, Earth is Weeping, its Water are Tears, Naima’s Movie, Zoo, The Last Displaced, Night Shift, Kroka, Keratin Day, VHS Tape Replaced and Koora.

Film AlUla supports Red Sea fest as strategic sponsor

AlUla features some of the most dramatic landscapes in the world.

On-site for the filming of Ric Roman Waugh’s upcoming action thriller Kandahar, starring Gerard Butler

Ooredoo TV opts for Ateme’s Titan encoders

headend, with its high-density Titan encoders, fit our vision perfectly. It enabled us to optimise our data centre costs by having a dense solution without any compromise on quality, while also providing an agile and flexible solution to reach more customers on the devices of their choice.”

Measat to migrate BeIN Sports channels to new satellite

Ooredoo TV, the TV arm of Ooredoo Qatar, went live with an IPTV/OTT converged headend powered by Ateme’s Titan encoders last month. It offers Ooredoo an all-inone solution for its current IPTV infrastructure and its plans to migrate services to OTT for its lineup of 450 linear channels and 1,000+

hours of offline content. The project was completed in 12 weeks with zero downtime.

Saoud Al-Shammeri, Assistant Director of TV & Multimedia at Ooredoo Qatar, said: “We wanted a solution that would meet our streaming requirements, while also being ready for the future. Ateme’s converged

Rajesh Jagadish, Sales Director – MEA at Ateme, added: “This project ensures that Ooredoo customers continue to be served with pristine video quality at the lowest latency. We are proud to have accompanied Ooredoo in this transformation and enabled their viewers to stream their preferred content to any device.”

Malaysian satellite operator Measat has begun migrating beIN Sports channels in Asia to its new Measat3d satellite. They will be the first set of broadcast channels to begin operations on the new satellite, which launched on 22 June.

VITEC launched an office in Dubai last month. The new regional HQ is part of VITEC's long-term Middle East growth plan with particular focus on Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Egypt. It is expecting a 50% growth in revenue in 2022. With a regional team of nine in Dubai and four in KSA, the ME team covers sales, business development, pre-sales and post-sales.

VITEC’s Dubai office launch follows its acquisition of Exterity, signalling the company’s intent to solidify its place as a major player in video streaming, IPTV and digital signage solutions.

VITEC used its large team of over 200 to accelerate the development of new features for Exterity’s solutions, which are now fully integrated into the VITEC portfolio.

Nicolas Pons, VP of

Business Development Middle East at VITEC, said: "We believe this investment will strengthen our presence and expand our reach into new business opportunities, markets and verticals in the region."

The transition is being delivered in partnership with Globecast, beIN Sports’ solutions provider for media and content management. After October 31, all three pan-regional channels of beIN Sports content covering the Asia-Pacific region will be based on the Measat-3d satellite, which carries C- and Kuband payloads for directto-home (DTH) services.

Ganendra Selvaraj, Chief Commercial Officer at Measat, said: “Measat is proud to be the satellite service provider of choice for beIN Sports, in partnership with Globecast. For Measat, the video segment continues to be a core focus and we are committed to providing reliable services for this segment, in cooperation with partners, content providers and channel operators.”

VITEC inaugurates regional headquarters in Dubai

At the inauguration of VITEC's Dubai office.

Rajesh Jagadish, Sales Director – MEA, Ateme.

Saoud Al-Shammeri, Asst Director of TV & Multimedia, Ooredoo Qatar

Abu Dhabi Media commissions Arabic version of In Treatment

Abu Dhabi Media has signed an agreement with Israeli distributor Dori Media Group (DMG) to create an Arabic adaptation of critically acclaimed psychological drama In Treatment.

As part of the agreement, ADM will produce 45 episodes to be broadcast

on Abu Dhabi TV and the ADtv app.

In Treatment was created in Israel in 2005 by Sheleg Productions under the title BeTipul. It has since been adapted in more than 20 countries worldwide. The agreement to produce the show was announced at

Dune sequel to be shot in Abu Dhabi this month

Dune: Part II will come to the Liwa Desert in Abu Dhabi for over a month in November 2022, taking advantage of the 30% cash rebate on productions offered by the Abu Dhabi Film Commission, while production services will be provided by Epic Films, along with support from a number of UAE production partners. Abu Dhabi will reprise its role as the iconic setting of the desert planet Arrakis in Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel.

Legendary Films, the producer of Dune, will be hiring five interns from

the UAE to experience first-hand what it is like to work on the set of a film. The production company also plans to hold seminars in Abu Dhabi for aspiring filmmakers and technicians in the UAE to learn more about the different areas of film production.

Dune is among more than 130 major productions that have used Abu Dhabi as a location in recent years, benefiting from the diversity of its locations, pool of talented professionals, awardwinning facilities and 30% cashback rebate.

MIPCOM Cannes and is the latest in a series of deals between the two companies, including unscripted formats The Selfie Challenge and Win the Crowd.

Abdulraheem Alnuaimi, acting GM of ADM, said: “In Treatment will be an exciting addition to Abu Dhabi TV

Network’s offering and we expect a huge success for the Arabic version of it. The deal is significant not only for ADM but also the wider sector in the UAE, as authorities step up efforts to establish the country as a global media and entertainment hub.”

India TV appoints NKN Media as UAE distribution partner

Dune is among more than 130 major productions that have been shot in Abu Dhabi.

Indian news channel India TV has appointed NKN Media FZC as its exclusive ad sales and distribution partner in the region. NKN Media will launch the channel on eLife from Etisalat. Roundthe-clock news coverage on India and the rest of the world will be available on the channel, which is already available in North America and will soon launch across other major markets with diaspora audiences.

Ritu Dhawan, MD of India TV, said: “India TV’s aim is to

inform and empower global Indians with accurate, indepth, unfiltered, fact-based journalism without any bias, outrage or sensationalism and establishing India TV as the best and most trusted place for news. Making India TV available in the UAE is one more step towards our goal.” Abdul Majid Khan, CEO of NKN Media, added: “We are certain that the partnership will be productive for both India TV and NKN Media, besides bringing in the channel for the huge Hindi news consumer base. The partnerships that we have engaged with in the past have helped NKN Media expand considerably over the last few years. Increasing our portfolio with onboarding channels of the likes of India TV only is a result of the growing appetite of the audience, and we are glad to cater to their needs.”

From left: Rajat Sharma, Abdul Majid Khan & Ritu Dhawan.

Netflix and Studio Production Training tie to launch KSA development programme

Netflix and Studio Production Training (SPT), a Saudi production training studio, have launched Below the Line KSA, a development programme designed to train and upskill 15 talented young Saudis through on-set training and workshops focused on art department and production roles.

Through the programme, SPT and Netflix aim to establish an infrastructure of below-the-line talent in Saudi by providing promising candidates access to vocational and practical training, inspired by global best practices. It will enable up-andcoming filmmakers in Saudi to break into the industry by providing them with the right skills and opportunities to build a career in film and television, and generate a

The Below the Line KSA programme will train and upskill 15 talented Saudi nationals through workshops.

qualified network of talent for the local film industry. The programme is being rolled out in two phases, with the first one kicking off in November with a 10day workshop focused on introducing art department roles including production design, art direction and set building. The second phase will run in January with another 10-day workshop focused on production roles

for aspiring line producers, production managers and assistant directors. Each candidate will have the opportunity to join a Netflix production as an assistant director, line producer, production manager/assistant, art director or prop master.

Hajar Alnaim, co-founder and CEO of SPT, said: “As a producer myself, one area that I know must grow is our pool of below-the-line talent.

I feel this is a vital group of professionals that’s essential for our shared success and is underserved in development at the moment. That’s where the idea for SPT was born.

A solution that benefits our entire industry, not just the company offering the training or the production that is training its own crew. We want to create a film industry that works for Saudi and not just emulates other countries. This is about creating a unified expectation of excellence to produce some of the finest film and television talent in the world.” Netflix is working with its production partners in Saudi Arabia, who will nominate people from their teams to participate in the programme. The candidates can be Saudi nationals or residents.

Indian video streaming platform MX Player has appointed SynProNize, a Dubai-based content distribution and production company, as the licensing representative for its original content. It By leveraging MX Player’s popularity and content portfolio, SynProNize stands to gain a strong foothold in these promising markets and strengthen its position in the OTT segment.

360 Radio, a station for expatriates and families in the Gulf region with education as a thrust area, has been launched by Abu Rashid, a renowned Arab media personality in the UAE. The bilingual station, operating primarily in English and Malayalam, will also have entertainment and educational programmes in Hindi, Tamil, Bengali and other South Indian languages. The online radio is equipped with the

latest smart software and technologies. Educational programmes will also be available as podcasts

on the website, while the social media accounts will present current affairs and expatriate news.

UAE launches 360 Radio for expatriate communities

SynProNize to represent MX Player for original content

Well-known media personality Abu Rashid performs the formal inauguration of 360 Radio with Sheikh Sultan Bin Saqr Al Nuaimi, CEO of 360 Radio watching.

INTIGRAL Markus Golder

CNBC ARABIA Shabbir Abid Hussain

MBC GROUP Natasha MatosHemingway

TOD John Paul Mckerlie

RISE STUDIOS Amanda Turnbull

TV NETWORK

Husseini

ATEME Damien Lucas

ELXSI LIMITED Ajay Kumar Meher

MASTER MEDIA Hasan Sayed Hasan

AL AAN TV Omar Othman

ABU DHABI FILM COMMISSION Hans Fraikin

STARZPLAY Maaz Sheikh

STRATEGIC PARTNER

KNOWLEDGE PARTNER SILVER SPONSOR

ASSOCIATE SPONSOR

ASSOCIATE SPONSOR ASSOCIATE SPONSOR

ASSOCIATE SPONSOR

ASSOCIATE SPONSOR

SILVER SPONSOR

NETWORKING SPONSOR NETWORKING SPONSOR

NETWORKING SPONSOR

NETWORKING SPONSOR

TWORKING SPONSOR

Westin Mina Seyahi

INTIGRAL William Sharp

AL MASHHAD

Mazen Laham

COMCAST Guy Spivack

BRIGHTCOVE EMEA Chris Moore

ZEE ENTERTAINMENT MIDDLE EAST Adil Adam Memon

STRATEGY& Karim Sarkis

MBC STUDIOS Safa Abu Rizk

DKL STUDIO Fadi Ismail

BLUE ENGINE STUDIOS FZ LLC Ziad Kebbi

Dubai investor comes forward to fund Italian feature film

Gold Digger concluded production in Dubai last month. The Italian feature film, whose cast includes Oscarwinners Danny Glover and F Murray Abraham as well as well-known Italian actors and actresses, was produced by Marvel Group’s partners Dr Abdullah Alshaibany and Sherif Thomas. The Line production for the project was undertaken by Dubai-based Icon Art

Production and its CEO Zak Zorro, who is also executive producer on the project.

“This is the first project I have invested in, and I believe this movie has the ability to make it big on the international scene,” explains Alshaibany, who is also Chairman and founder of Emirates International Investment. Passionate about films, the Emirati national says this is only the first of several investments

he is planning in feature films. “We are a private investment company and we make it our business to know about good projects. I have always been passionate about films so when we heard about this project, we decided to get involved in it.”

According to Alshaibany, at least 30% of the shooting for the film was completed in the UAE while the rest of the production took place in Italy.

The team shot in various locations across Dubai.

The team shot for 14 days in Dubai and six weeks in Italy. “This movie is in keeping with the cultural sensitivities of our people and is like a family action movie, so we are sure it will also do incredibly well in this market.”

One of the big aspects of this project was the line production.

“We did the entire line production including location scouting, transportation, sourcing the venues, providing the technical team, equipment, art, stunt team and so on. Apart from the main characters’ roles, most of the cast was sourced from the UAE and they were from different nationalities.

In fact, we had more than 200 local cast throughout the film schedule on set as part of the cast,” explains Zak Zorro.

One of the big challenges was securing permits on time.

“We are so grateful to all the support provided by the various government authorities in Dubai including the Dubai Film and TV Commission, Dubai Police, Dubai Municipality, Dubai Airports, RTA, Ministry of Defence and Dubai Civil Aviation Authority, RTA – Abra Waterways and so many other entities, all of whom supported us. We shot in 15 to 20 different locations across Dubai such as the airport, SLS Hotel

Dubai, Meydan Hotel, the Emirates Grand Hotel helipad, Sheikh Zayed Road, Qudra Desert, Dubai Skylines, Meydan Bridge, Business Bay, Sheikh Zayed Road, Meena Bazaar, RTA Abra and so on. We had only five days to secure all the permits and all the relevant departments in Dubai ensured we got them on time.”

Zorro says what makes this production important is the involvement of a private Emirati investor. “Very few private investors have come forward from the local market to fund a film, so Mr Alshaibany has set the stage for new beginnings in the market.”

The Gold Digger team had a press conference last month to announce the conclusion of the Dubai segment of the shoot.

CNBC Arabia

Dubai

Media Cast)

MGI

Objective: To upgrade the Dubai facility from SD to HD, and improve the digital viewing experience while creating an infrastructure that can be scaled in the future

suppliers: Grass Valley, Ross, Fujinon, Calrec, Coemar, Argosy, Evertz, Riedel, Avid, Vitec, Sennheiser, Sony, Plura, TSL, Vizrt, Lawo

A NEWS LEASE OF LIFE

CNBC Arabia recently migrated its Dubai facility from SD to HD, revamped its digital offerings and made ambitious cloud investments. It has now built an IP facility in Doha with plans for subsequent upgrades to its bureaus across the Middle East. In conversation with BroadcastPro ME, Mohamad Burhan, the network's CEO, and Shabbir Hussain, Director of Operations and Engineering, walk us through the technical highlights of the facility and the company’s future plans

Free-to-air news channel CNBC Arabia, the regional arm of CNBC, has been operating in the Middle East for the last two decades, covering regional and international affairs from an Arab economic perspective. Headquartered in Dubai under the leadership of CEO Mohammed Burhan, the channel recently completed a long overdue migration to HD, with Director of Operations and Engineering Shabbir Hussain leading the project.

Hussain, who has spent the last couple of decades working as a systems integrator with numerous regional broadcasters, was familiar with the various combinations and permutations that come with such migrations. So when he moved over to the end user side, he quickly identified some of the common challenges that could crop up in such a project, though he admits he had some surprises along the way. The broadcaster roped in Doha-based systems integrator Salam Media Cast for the migration in March 2022. By summer, a newly revamped CNBC Arabia channel was on air with

a state-of-the-art HD set-up.

The Dubai facility, however, is only part of a grand plan that includes a stellar IP-only studio facility in Doha in the commissioning phase now, with subsequent upgrades planned in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt, where the channel has bureaus.

Mohamad Burhan, CEO of CNBC Arabia, says: “It’s part of a bigger vision as well as the new face of CNBC Arabia. We aim to have the latest in terms of technology and simultaneously ensure all our bureau offices are upgraded and connected. We also intend to localise our services better to meet the needs of our audience.”

Hussain elaborates: “CNBC Arabia first planned this migration to HD back in 2019, because legacy equipment was significantly hindering the network’s operational efficiency. The pandemic, however, delayed that project and when we revisited it in March this year, we realised that a bigger, major horizontal expansion that would include all our bureaus and platforms was necessary. The aim was to ensure that all our systems were working well in parallel across

As part of the upgrade, the channel now has a new studio with LG video walls.

“As our live broadcasts were going out from the same facility, we couldn’t afford to face any downtime or blackouts … [but] every single equipment in the facility needed to be changed”

Shabbir Hussain, Director of Operations and Engineering, CNBC Arabia

all platforms, that the bureaus would all be connected, that the technology was up to date and everything was in sync. This was essential for us to be on a par with the rest of the industry.”

Prior to this integration, CNBC had already embarked on a project with Qvest Media that included upgrading the newsroom solution with an Avid system, shared media storage and post-production solutions.

A major upgrade undertaken as part of this project was the deployment of Pebble playout automation and a BTS scheduling system. The playout solution was then integrated with the new transmission room, which includes

an Evertz presentation switcher and Viz tickers. Both the Avid and Pebble solutions were then reconfigured to support the new HD format.

One of the biggest challenges the team faced was space constraints. CNBC Arabia occupies the first and second floors of Building 7 in Dubai Media City, home to most of the broadcasters and media houses in the emirate.

“Dismantling the old system while creating space for the new installation was a cause for concern, especially since we have only one CAR, which already houses a lot of equipment and critical cabling laid during the various projects in the last 20 years. We had to rearrange our space to enable migration by creating separate PCR, ACR and playout rooms, and this called for some out-of-the-box

thinking,” explains Hussain.

Migration to the new system therefore required a lot of meticulous planning. “As our live broadcasts were going out from the same facility, we couldn’t afford to face any downtime or blackouts … [but] every single equipment in the facility needed to be changed.”

The entire newsroom system was upgraded from ENPS to Avid iNews in HD format. As part of the HD upgrade, an additional shared Library and Edit on Demand (EOD), Avid’s cloud-based media composer for editing over the cloud, was also deployed.

“We are the first in the region to implement the Avid EOD,” explains Hussain. “We went with Avid

shared storage because it allows the whole newsroom to work from one central location, making files easily accessible. And the key part was that we went with the Edit on Demand, which is cloudware. So all our bureaus are going to do their edits in the cloud and the files can be easily retrieved to the system without wasting any time on transcoding. Here again, we have thus far worked with different formats from different CNBC bureaus. All that will now be standardised and centralised.”

The new CNBC Arabia

headquarters in Dubai boasts two news studios, replacing the existing studio.

Studio 1 consists of five Grass Valley LDX-92 cameras with Fujinon 4K lenses and two Sony PTZs supported by Vinten Robotics, a Kahuna 6400 vision mixer and a Calrec Brio audio mixer.

Studio 2, primed for a virtual set-up, is also equipped with GV cameras and supported by Ross Robotics. This studio includes Viz virtual solutions, a GV vision mixer and Calrec Brio. In time, the team hopes to add remote functionality.

The refresh includes new sets with a touchscreen, a 3x98” LG video wall, a 2x98” additional video wall and a brand-

new IPTV system. Studio 2 now also has a second PCR gallery to cater to its production requirements.

The entire facility is supported by Evertz infrastructure, which includes the Evertz EQX-10 core router with integrated Evertz VIP multiviewer and an Evertz Magnum control & monitoring system. Other components include autoscript, Sennheiser microphones, a Riedel Intercom system with the capability to communicate with other bureaus, Plura monitors for video, TSL for audio monitoring and lighting from Coemar.

Various areas of the Dubai facility.

“We had to ensure that we did not disrupt the existing broadcast while we migrated to the new system. So we would remove two racks, put in a new system, then remove another two racks and install another new system,” explains Hussain.

With these constraints, Hussain is proud to have completed the project within four months. “We signed the contract in March and went live just two days before Eid in July. Everything went without any glitches on air. That was the biggest takeaway on that day.”

Systems integrator MGI played a big role in ensuring that the project was delivered on time. “One of our challenges was integrating and migrating the upgraded BIT system with the new broadcast infrastructure to have a full HD on-air system by July 2022,” explains Ashraf Mannath, Manager Operations at MGI, adding that MGI helped CNBC Arabia “to change its lighting fixtures to LEDs as well as upgrade Studio 2 with the GVG cameras and Ross Robotic system”. Hussain explains: “One important element of this project has been data migration. Most of our content was stored on SD tapes so the

CNBC Arabia updates and enhances online offerings

In September 2022, CNBC Arabia launched a revamped website and mobile apps on Android and iOS with the help of Reidheiser, a company that primarily designs websites and apps. The network removed the walls between its mainstream TV channel and its website, mobile apps and social media platforms. Its videos were prepared editorially and technically to be published on TV as well as on other OTT platforms.

“They built a complete integrated system for us. The aim was to adopt a convergent approach towards news

so CNBC Arabia could apply crossplatform postings,” says Hussain.

To enable this, CNBC Arabia's website and mobile apps use Amazon Web Services (AWS) as the hosting infrastructure. AWS helps CNBC Arabia to scale bigger and adapt to changes over time with a wide option of hosting services, and with auto-scaling, storage and advanced monitoring tools, so that CNBC Arabia can grow and monitor the health of its services.

A critical partner for CNBC Arabia’s website and mobile apps is ZagTrader. The financial data provider consolidates

process of digitisation was quite tedious, but we accomplished this within a couple of months. All the content was migrated from OMF to MXF. The entire data storage will be maintained in Dubai, where a huge Avid Shared Library maintains the old assets, while new information will also be stored in that from now onwards.”

Alongside this, CNBC Arabia staff were also being trained on the new systems. “This was a challenge because when the migration was going on, the team had to work on the old system and in parallel be trained on the new system. This was especially true for the newsroom staff, who would train at the end of the day for two or three hours on the new system. On weekends, we used to do a complete trial.”

Mannath credits the success of this project to the collaboration between the end user, the vendor community and the systems integrator. “Typically, the supply chain was severely impacted due to Covid, which means we had very long lead times for everything. But the vendor ecosystem we worked with ensured timely delivery of the systems and has

a database of worldwide companies and market data and delivers customised data feeds based on the requirements of the broadcaster. The service includes index prices, stock prices, charting, financials and profiles, market movers and search tools.

CNBC Arabia hopes to have a detailed social media strategy with social content retailored for the broadcast screen, adds CEO Burhan. “We will reintegrate this for the big screen, and for now they are serving as fillers, but eventually we hope to feature the best of the best segments.”

“We aim to have the latest in terms of technology and simultaneously ensure all our bureau offices are upgraded and connected. We also intend to localise our services better to meet the needs of our audience”

Mohamad Burhan, CEO, CNBC Arabia

continued to provide support for CNBC Arabia’s operations.”

With this project, the infrastructure is now ready and can easily accommodate 12G, UHD or IP in the future. “We first wanted to ensure a smooth transition from SD to HD/3G and then evaluate a potential upgrade,” Hussain clarifies.

In the meantime, the team is in the process of commissioning a whole new IP-based facility in Doha, with two studios and control galleries. The facility is based on the SMPTE 2110 standard and well supported by Evertz infrastructure. It is integrated with CNBC Arabia’s Dubai headquarters for monitoring and troubleshooting from either site.

The IP infrastructure is built on core Evertz NATX switches and orchestrated by Magnum OS & IS-05 to integrate with all other third-party systems, including Grass Valley cameras, Lawo audio, Riedel Intercom, Avid newsroom solutions and Vizrt graphics. It is also equipped with a 12m x 3m video wall from Delta and includes Vinten Robotics, Jimmy Jib and ARRI lighting. The facility will also have approximately 30 Vizrt integrated newsroom clients with Cloud UX, and a couple of graphics and edit suites.

The facilities at Doha and Dubai will be connected over lease line, enabling journalists in either site to search for any file on the Avid Shared Library. Feeds from here will also be received on both ends over fibre and, as a back-up, over the LiveU.

The intercom systems will be

connected over VoIP to ensure seamless connection between facilities. While the other sites are not yet connected, they eventually will be through different cloudbased solutions, assures Hussain. For compliance, CNBC replaced the existing legacy solution with Actus Broadcast logging, an advanced broadcast compliance and monitoring solution designed to record both transmitted content and studio clean feeds, repurposed for the website and social media platforms.

“I think we were very fortunate that we had the right people at the right time in each place, because migration projects can sometimes be very unrewarding,” explains Hussain. PRO

An Avid system powers the newsroom, above right; and below, the new studio at CNBC Arabia.

HOW VFX AND CG CAN TAKE BRANDS TO THE NEXT LEVEL

With the digital boom in the mid-2000s, computergenerated imagery (CGI) rapidly took over analogue and photochemical processes that had been the norm in the film industry for decades. That, among other technological advancements, created fertile ground for VFX to flourish and allowed machinegenerated effects to begin taking precedence over on-set special effects. This not only saved valuable time and money but also unleashed endless creative possibilities, giving brands an array of options to express their values and ethos and showcase their product in the most favourable light possible.

The invisible craft Next to its video compositing showreel, the team at Nested VFX prides itself on clients “not spotting what their magic hands fixed”, and that’s for a good reason. One of the essential roles of visual effects is to make the real look more real, whether by adding beautiful clouds to a dull grey sky or cleaning out the camera’s reflection on the body of a shiny car. This is especially important when it comes to brands.

Modern neurological and psychological studies conclude that “novelty motivates the brain to explore, seeking a reward”. In popular filming areas, the most iconic view in the city has probably been used repeatedly. Chances are that your

consumers have driven on this road a thousand times or are familiar with every corner of this park or building. Simply using them as they are to showcase your product or tell your story will make your video dull and the customer’s experience boring. Creating or enhancing an environment can motivate the viewer to delve deeper into the message you want to portray. Why not finish this unfinished

building on the horizon? Remove the unsightly scaffolding, clean that dirty window, add some greenery to the environment or even a new commercial centre instead of that dirt patch. Give your consumers something new and fresh, something that is ‘real’ but still outside of their everyday visual experience.

VFX: A way to cheat

A popular sentiment is that using VFX is a cheat and a lie about how your product really looks. Have you ever stopped at a fast-food outlet, ordered a burger and received it looking anything like the video commercial that made you decide to purchase it in the first place? The truth is that a customer’s experience with a product is a live, tactile, three-dimensional, multi-sensory experience. Pointing some lights and cameras at it won’t be able to truly emulate the product experience you want your customer to imagine. Computer manipulation of imagery accentuates the visual experience to compensate for the sensory limitations of a 2D medium.

The marvellous, magnificent and extravagant

As you are bringing a new story into the world, you might say: “I do want the magic and the unreal, the futuristic and the out-of-this-world, the over-the-top and the in-your-face effects.” Here is where CG and VFX are your only recourse to supplement or even replace your live shoot. Do you want your detergent to have fresh lavenders blooming in a living room? Delicious morsels of chocolate dancing in your sublime pudding? A futuristic car using your brand of tyres to speed on a futuristic highway in a futuristic city? Or have your story play out in an enchanting Van Gogh dream? Your creativity has no limits, and in the hands of a talented artist, the newest technological tools can now help you achieve it.

Bang for the buck

Although untamed creativity, storytelling with no limits and the prospect of an appealing product are excellent reasons to rely on VFX, there is also the substantial financial aspect. You have a celebrity football player that your brand has a deal with, and

you want to film them interacting with your product. Why spend millions on travel and accommodation when you can do a face replacement? You film with a local cast with similar physical features, and the tools are here to sculpt a 3D face to replace your stand-in with the celebrity.

Another example applied in Europe is a dummy car used onset instead of the final product, which allows car manufacturers to use the same commercial with different car models and colours, depending on the various market availabilities and preferences. For example, a hatchback blue car can sell well in France, whereas a black sedan is what a German consumer prefers. Suddenly you have the freedom to manipulate the exact product you want within several different markets, targeting several audiences with one film.

Not only is that true for car commercials, but for any brand film you might have. Maybe you shot a commercial last year but recently changed the pack design. Maybe, like the cars but on a smaller scale, you have different packaging designs for different markets. Or perhaps your video is still brand-relevant, but the city skyline has changed since filming. VFX is here to push the mileage capability on your video and give you the best bang for your buck.

Samer Asfour is CEO of Nested VFX, a Dubai post-production and visual FX studio.

The team on-site.

BLACKMAGIC GIVES KYADDALA BIG BOOST WITH RESOLVE

Kyaddala's intense storyline instantly won the hearts of millions of viewers in Africa for its powerful portrayal of young adult issues on the continent. We bring you a behind-the-scenes look at how the production and editing of season two helped craft a cinematic yet vibrant look designed for its youthful audience

Kyaddala was an instant hit among African audiences, especially in East Africa, when it was broadcast nationwide. Both seasons of the drama, which focuses on real-life social issues, were shot on the Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 4.6K, with the second season also benefiting from a camera to post workflow including edit, colour and finishing in DaVinci Resolve Studio. The series was produced by Emmanuel Ikubese Films together with the NGO Reach a Hand Uganda. Ugandan screenwriter Usama Mukwaya produced all episodes and directed the second season, which has just finished airing.

Kyaddala, a Luganda word meaning ‘it's real’, examines issues of sexually

reproductive health through the lens of school-age characters and their parents, teachers and mentors. While season one was set in a secondary school, season two follows some of the same characters as they enter university. One storyline concerns a student who marries an older man after leaving school, and how they both fare when she goes back to college to further her education.

Critics have heralded the series as changing the face of television in Uganda.

“The drama is a way to address the challenges faced in our community about HIV, teenage pregnancy and gender-based violence, which significantly increased at home during Covid,” explains Sserwadda

Shafic, who supervised postproduction across both series and worked closely with Usama as cinematographer and colour grader on season two. “By using fictionalised situations based on real-life issues, the aim is to help young people and their parents make more informed decisions.”

Season one was shot on the URSA Mini Pro 4.6K using ProRes 422, with Kyaddala’s producers upgrading to the 4.6K G2 for the second run.

“We loved working with the URSA Mini 4.6K and chose the G2 camera for its ability to shoot Blackmagic RAW, its inbuilt ND filters and the colour science,” says Shafic. “We chose the DZO film Pictor zoom lenses for its clinical film look with their beautiful bokeh and soft rolloffs. We shot with the 20-55mm and 50-125mm T2.9 lenses at an aspect ratio of 16:9.”

To reflect a storyline centred on the sexual reproductive health rights of young people, the filmmakers built a palette based on youthful colours to achieve a

cinematic but vibrant look. The show was largely shot on location at Hana International Mixed School in Kampala and lit by ARRI Skypanels and fresnels tuned to illuminate rich natural skin tones.

“Our approach was to achieve a natural warm feel that could help the audience relate with the different events happening in the series,” says Shafic. “The script was quite intense in terms of story, locations and the number of cast we were working with.”

Shafic, who owns local postproduction facility Incredible Media, set up a QNAP NAS server as the show’s main storage source into which he networked the show’s six editors.

“We used the DaVinci server to achieve a collaborative workflow where all editors could edit simultaneously in the same project. This was a massive step up from the first season, where we were using another editing software which we found just couldn’t handle the amount of data we needed it to. We were waiting hours for content to upload. As soon as season two was commissioned, I researched online, found some tutorials about DaVinci Resolve and knew way ahead of time that this is what we’d use.”

Media from the production totalled over 50TB, all at 4K RAW. With DaVinci Resolve, post-production was cut by half, from six months to three.

Shafic continues: “We can have one or more people editing on the fly, another mixing sound and music, another doing graphics, while I’ll be applying a grade across the whole series – and it was mind-blowing. I feel like it is the best thing that has happened to us. We are so much faster now and able to be so much more creative as a team.”

He himself has a background in IT, and just a couple of years

Cinematographer and post-production supervisor Sserwadda Shafic says the team chose the DZO film Pictor zoom lenses for the clinical film look with their beautiful bokeh and soft rolloffs.

“Our approach was to achieve a natural warm feel that could help the audience relate with the different events happening in the series”

Sserwadda Shafic, cinematographer and colour grader, Incredible Media

ago was more familiar with servers in banks than in film and TV. His passion for filmmaking led him to change careers.

“I am a self-taught filmmaker learning every day. I didn’t discover LUTs until I read how Roger Deakins crafted the look of 1917 by embedding an LUT into the camera. That is something I will investigate going forward.”

His professional IT experience did prove an advantage in figuring out how to manage media. “I set

up a file structure and explained it to all our editors, our sound recorders and DIT. It was a simple folder structure breaking down the footage by scene, scene number and take. We all had the same information.”

Kyaddala season two has generated a remarkable response across the region. Picked up by broadcasters in Kenya and Tanzania, the show is striking a chord in its ability to teach young adults and those who work with and care for them how to handle some of society’s most pressing issues.

“The impact of the show has generated a massive movement when it comes to talking about the issues surrounding teenage pregnancy and genderbased violence. More than anything technical, that is where the major success is.”

As a result, Kyaddala season three is currently being written, with Shafic already planning to shoot this on the URSA Mini Pro 12K and use a DaVinci Resolve post workflow. PRO

Filming on-site with the Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 4.6K camera.

LIVING ON THE EDGE

Bob Lyons, CEO of Edgio, has created an edge technology leader by combining Limelight and several acquisitions. In conversation with BroadcastPro ME , Lyons discusses the company’s strategy, his vision for Edgio and its Middle East plans

You haven’t been very long at Edgio, but there have been some pretty big changes since you came on board. I joined the company in February of last year. We spent some time with our board looking at Edgio, known as Limelight at the time. This media delivery business hadn’t performed nearly as well as its peers, yet had developed a global, performant network and assets. We saw a marketplace opportunity to deliver what we call edge-enabled solutions – closest to where users or viewers consume their digital content.

We realised that delivering edge services could be a big key to solving our problems and a massive growth opportunity. People expect secure, fast and reliable experiences, and this all happens at the edge. So we decided to transform Limelight from just offering a video CDN solution to being an edge-enabled solutions provider.

In the fall of last year, we acquired Layer0, which gave us the application stack that we put on our network. Layer0 also gave us deep software and architecture skills. With that, we could transform the way we thought about solutions on the edge and make them software-based. Then we brought over EdgeCast in June, which more than doubled our network and revenue, and offered an industry-leading security stack that we could put on our edge. Today we’ve got the applications, the security and the edge platform, and we have integrated them.

The last 10 years has been about cloud and SaaS. The next 10 years will be about the edge. Most companies have a hard time getting there themselves. We want to be the platform of choice to help companies take advantage of the edge – and that's really our focus.

We have also become the most complete web application and API platform in the world. We offer the fastest speed, the best security and the most productivity.

What are your media opportunities?

Edgio is doubling down on our video opportunities and has invested in them. As you know, EdgeCast is already the premier live events company in the world. When you complement that with what we have – our VOD and our edge platform – it allows us to offer the full, complete package for streaming and video. In just 15 months, we have transformed our network and it’s now the number one performing company in the world. We recently surpassed Google to achieve this #1 ranking according to PerfOps.

We are very quickly close to becoming the top player for streaming as well. In the meantime, we will continue to look at acquisitions including security to broaden that part of the platform.

How have your numbers gone up in the last 15 months?

Before, we had 20 customers that made up most of the revenue, which means it was very concentrated.

Fast forward to today and with EdgeCast and the other applications, we now have thousands of customers. So in a period of 15 months, we have gone from a small number of clients to a far more diverse base. This was mostly through acquisition but we’re expanding on that as well.

When you look at the application stack, we know we have a winner. Every company in the world has a website. Every company in the world needs to do this better. We're really focused on companies that have high-stakes websites. E-commerce, for instance, is one area where people who do commerce want to be at the edge, because speed and security really matter to their shoppers.

When we were just Limelight, our addressable market was probably in the $4-5bn range. Now it’s more than $30bn. So we’ve expanded our addressable market and the number of customers. And more importantly, we

now have the most complete solution and a very large untapped market in our sight.

Can you elaborate on the security bit?

In the last ten years, many have moved to the cloud and to SaaS. It’s been great for scale and efficiency, but think about security. Typically, security for the last 20 years has been about building a perimeter around your assets. Yet with cloud and SaaS, you don’t have a perimeter anymore.

So how do you do security? That needs to be done at the edge. How do you improve the productivity of your IT shop? When you’re trying to put all these pieces together that are coming from different places, the only way to do that is aggregate it at the edge and pre-configure it. And then, in terms of performance, the internet wasn’t made to handle this kind of traffic. So as a CDN, Edgio can bypass the internet and take it right from your origination straight to the ISP and your eyeballs.

How has your role in the Middle East evolved?

We probably have the largest footprint in the Middle East now of all our competitors, with the numbers of countries and presence. We’re now expanding our edge solutions here. We see our ISP relationships as partnerships. To have edge-enabled solutions, we need to have a good ecosystem and partnership with the ISPs and not just see them as part of a vendor relationship.

We’ve invested heavily to have that as the base for our investment moving forward. So we’ve worked with the ISPs and we have our edge cache embedded inside most networks within the Middle Eastern countries where we have a presence. That’s been a big growth area for us.

Many of those have come online already and many more will come online each quarter as we go. And we’re expanding as the traffic grows in the region with those operators. We have embarked on this exciting journey, but the only way Edgio works is by having the most scaled and the most performant platform in the world. If you don’t have that, nothing else matters.

We have put a lot of time and money into this; we took our best engineers and we said, “Your job now is to make us the best in the world.”

We are making sure that 98% of the world's population is within a few miles of one of our PoPs. The whole world is living more and more digital, and these experiences have to ride on somebody’s highway. Why not ours?

Can you elaborate on marketplace changes?

The Middle East becomes important with countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, where the demographic is so young. All the e-commerce for instance is really starting to take off, and that's going to be a key focus for us.

Where we were previously focused on the content delivery side, we are now moving more into the security space. This really helps us diversify and make use of all the investments we’ve made into the Middle East so far. We will continue to invest in the region and continue to put more feet on the ground in the region to back up the investment now.

Another big dynamic to think about is how social media and the

millennials build their social networks. Before, your tribe was your country or your town demographic, but this doesn’t hold true anymore. Today it can span the globe and everybody’s social norms are being blended in this social cocktail.

What about the underserved markets?

There’s a lot of infrastructure that's coming, and 5G is one of them. What’s interesting about the rural areas is that although there may not be that much fibre, Wi-Fi, 5G and satellite are trying to address those areas. Our job is making those transmissions that much more efficient. You can take a Starlink box and put it anywhere in the world and you'll be able to watch Netflix or any content. Edgio goes beyond our physical infrastructure to all the caching and compression to optimise experiences.

What are some of the challenges you see going forward?

I think the biggest challenge is that people are still thinking in the paradigms that existed 20 years ago. Technology, however, has totally transformed and turned upside down these paradigms. We have to help people navigate edge technology adoption in these new paradigms. We can provide that edge platform to make digital living faster, safer and a better experience.

Internally, Edgio’s challenge is to stay focused and not chase too many opportunities. That’s always a challenge. There’s a lot of things you can go after. We’ve got to be good at what we do, but what we're finding is the market dynamics and our strategy are providing us a nice tailwind. Execution is the biggest challenge – execution focus and the ever-changing set of priorities in the industry. PRO

“When we were just Limelight, our addressable market was probably in the $4-5bn range. Now it’s more than $30bn”

Bob Lyons, CEO, Edgio

TRADITION & TECH:

SOME LIGHT ON LIGHTING WITH GAME ENGINES

Since the very beginning of capturing an image – moving or not – lighting has had one of the biggest, most important roles in the actualisation of breathtaking visuals. For fine arts, it was a way of expressing tonality and evoking a particular feeling in a piece, and as new forms of artistic visual expression arose, these principles were carried over.

Aesthetic and tonal accuracy are part and parcel of crafting a consistent and coherent visual tone, and lighting is one of the largest components of it all staying held together. If you’re watching something meant to be sinister and unsettling, lighting can be the difference between unsettling and just unseen. With the visual effects demands of the

modern era, lighting (and expert control of it) is held to an even higher standard, with green screen and chroma workflows to match a digital environment added much later.

Much like anything in the creative world, sometimes it’s accurate and sometimes not so much. With the advent of virtual production and LED set extensions, however, accuracy and control are elevated to a completely different level, without the need to estimate an eventual final image.

For a while now, lighting for visual effects and creating aesthetic consistency while shooting in a soon-to-be-added environment has largely been a lovely waltz of visual alchemy – one part lighting for something that’s not entirely there, one

Lighting is to camera what water is to fish: Without one, it’s hard for the other to do its thing, says Matthew Collu

part generating and implementing the missing piece. Many incredibly talented creatives have hit their stride and nailed their end of the formula, but in other instances they’ve had to go back and try again. This is both costly and meticulous, not to mention time-consuming (I can hear the cries of every upset producer echoing out as we speak). Through no fault of either creative side, artificing something without a

complete formula is mighty daunting, and many argue that it would be much easier if that fantastical horizon or sci-fi city backdrop was just simply … real.

With real-time rendering software solutions, LED walls and in-camera visual effects comes a heightened level of interaction. A totally realtime virtual environment brings many added benefits, and one of the most notable is realistic lighting and control over almost any detail. In order to best explain this, along with its core features and functionality, I’ll break down how it changes, creates and enhances workflows.

With the previous examples of the possible pitfalls of lighting an imaginary setting, it's hopefully easy to see what the workflow stands to gain with a completely integrated and interactive real-time set extension. Bearing in mind the other changes that virtual production brings to creative teams (for the better), the change in how artists and industry can use, control and artistically explore lighting – while always ensuring its accuracy to the world it takes place in – requires some fundamental understanding of how an LED wall works.

In essence, it's simple. Think of an LED wall or stage as a giant computer monitor. As images appear and colours flash, that monitor kicks out a certain

amount of light. Apply that same principle to that of an LED stage, and all the colours and values of the world you display on that screen are cast onto your subject of choice. When that subject is surrounded by this billboard of innovation, you get 100% environmental lighting accuracy on anything placed within the volume.

Explaining why this changes the workflow seems redundant. But how it changes things –that’s worth swan diving into. Traditionally and conventionally, without a reactive, real-time virtual environment blasting light out into your scene, doing it all manually can be extremely temperamental and, as said, possibly inaccurate as it takes new forms downstream. There can also be missed nuances that in some cases would never have had time allocated for refinement on shoot day, or would never have been thought of at the time of principal photography.

By removing the need to properly match the ambient lighting of a scene and relying on the innate interaction coming from the LED wall, resources and energy can be allocated to refining the style and tone of the scene as a whole. This is not only more efficient but also stylistically freeing. Another change with real-time virtual environments is the ability to add things in seconds that could take hours on a traditional set or on location. If you need an additional kicker coming from the right of the frame, or a gel from just above, those elements can be added and displayed on the wall without having to assign labour or resources. This isn’t to say that traditional fixtures can’t be used to aid in the perfect dial-in of your final look. ARRI, among other vendors, has direct control and functionality features that integrate directly into real-time software apps. Virtual production isn’t about replacing or taking tools away

“The change in how artists and industry can use, control and artistically explore lighting – while always ensuring its accuracy to the world it takes place in – requires some fundamental understanding of how an LED wall works”

Matthew Collu, Studio Coordinator, The Other End

“By removing the need to properly match the ambient lighting of a scene, resources and energy can be allocated to refining the style and tone of the scene as a whole”

from filmmakers, but rather offering additional solutions to common problems in workflows and enhancing existing tools.

Going back to our primary example of shooting and lighting for a non-existent CG environment, the green/blue/chroma pipeline of modern visual effects also benefits greatly. Instead of projecting the camera's perspective in the virtual environment behind the subject, a flat colour of your choice can instead very easily be swapped out

for use, all while having the accuracy of the environmental lighting still cast on your subjects by the surrounding digital vista. Pair that with the colour levels staying consistent across all values for efficient keying, and you have an enhanced traditional VFX workflow that still allows artists to be stylistically free with how and where they lob those foot-candles.

Part of the allure when discussing virtual production and real-time filmmaking is the in-camera element or the ‘right there’ ideology. Having interactive environmental lighting that

is true to whatever environment is projected is not only a wonderful example; most incredibly, it further equips creatives with complete control over worlds and environmental lighting previously only accessible to nature itself.

Lighting is as important to the integrity of a production as paint is to a canvas. Just as painters have been able to completely craft and control their palette in the moment, virtual production now gives filmmakers real-time control over theirs.

Matthew Collu is Studio Coordinator at The Other End, Canada. He is a visual effects artist and cinematographer with experience working in virtual production pipelines and helping production teams leverage the power of Unreal Engine and real-time software applications.

Matthew Collu, Studio Coordinator, The Other End

A totally real-time virtual environment brings many added benefits, and one of the most notable is realistic lighting and control over almost any detail.

An increasing number of European broadcasters are investing in HDR production and distribution. They recognise that to audiences, it makes an obvious difference – HDR is a means of attracting and retaining viewers.

Data show that consumers see HDR as having a big impact, bigger perhaps than 4K. It may be that we will see the practical choice of 1080p/HDR as a dominant format. It is much more cost-effective than the jump all the way to 4K HDR, for basically the same audience impact. HDR is already commonly used in cinema/drama production, where the concepts of colour management are well-established and the standard edit software platforms are HDR-compatible.

The challenge comes in live production, particularly live sports. This is the genre that always drives innovation in broadcasting, because of the stakes involved (expensive rights and giant audiences) and the technical challenges (e.g., camera shading for sunlight and shadows in the same scene).

Television production isn’t just about relaying the exact scene to the viewer. Producers and networks may also apply their own specific looks, driving their unique brand value while also showcasing the added dynamic range and colour gamut. They frequently apply custom LUTs tuned to create the look they want.

The main cameras are routinely shaded by trained professionals to

Tackling the creative challenges of HDR

provide the matching and supervise the output quality, but a large sport shoot will involve many other cameras – POVs, stump cameras in cricket, goalmouth cameras in football. In HDR, the inter-mixing of these SDR (standard dynamic range) sources into the HDR production is disruptive if not managed, since these signals must be processed to match the look of the main signals as closely as possible.

On an outside broadcast, where desk space is limited, any additional colour shading must fit into the existing workspace and operator footprint. Imagine has worked on innovative solutions to address this issue, collaborating with Cyanview to enable its control surface for colour manipulation, as well as with many other operational control systems to support our SNP UHD/HDR processing engine.

Creating a consistent production from a large footprint of sources and delivering the artistic vision of the director in HDR are the primary objectives. But it is also critically important to translate that HDR look back into SDR, the way the vast majority of viewers will see it. Responsibility for these translations is complex; the camera shaders and technical directors must consider how their fantastic HDR scenes will look in SDR, and the eventual translation downstream at the network hub must be done the same way it was checked on the truck.

Video processors and converters

are found at many steps along the production pipeline, and as these productions shift into HDR, all these processors must be HDR-capable to preserve the signal fidelity, sometimes including custom LUTs and productionspecific adjustments. All while fitting into the rack space, power and other operational requirements of what is already in place.

We have been working on HDR with broadcasters and production companies for years, delivering UHD/HDR capabilities to operations as diverse as QVC Japan and the NFL Network in the US. That has meant many conversations about HDR and colour space conversion, even as the production industry has been trying to standardise how these HDR workflows work. Flexibility is key, as many aspects of HDR production are not yet settled or agreed among production professionals, so our HDR processors must be able to adapt to the needs and wants of each user.

Major broadcasters are continuing to study how HDR affects viewership, with a focus on the practicalities of delivering productions at the right cost. The next wave of broadcasters coming into HDR all benefit from this accumulated knowledge and experience. With the right technical infrastructure enabling consistent HDR delivery even within established SDR workflows, the scene is set for increased deployment of HDR into more live event productions.

John Mailhot is CTO Networking & Infrastructure at Imagine Communications.

“Flexibility is key, as many aspects of HDR production are not yet settled or agreed among production professionals, so our HDR processors must be able to adapt to the needs and wants of each user”