MATT DAVIS
Play Brawl scene re-enactment from Ferris Beuller’s Day Off
Interviewed by Minjae Kim
Minjae Kim: What exactly was the “Live Virtual Gala?”
Matt Davis: This was our third year of Play Brawl, a friendly competition which pairs community leaders with professional actors, to recreate iconic scenes from movies, TV shows, and musicals. Referred to as “Contenders,” volunteers ranging from Fortune-500 executives and news anchors, to local charity leaders, and business owners, work with us to choose a scene from one of their favorite pieces of pop-culture, and we hire local professional actors to portray it with them on stage. The audience watches each piece, and votes for each scene they enjoy by donating via their phones, at just $1 per vote. At the end of the night, we tally the votes, and declare a Play Brawl Champion, and award a trophy.
Of course, the event is typically done live at our theatre. The event takes place in a mock wrestling ring, props and costumes are provided for each scene, and the voting/scores (the “leaderboard”) is projected on a screen in between each round. We typically cover transitions and scene changes with short video clips, and intersperse other award presentations, important theatre announcements, and a live auction between rounds. We usually have 6-10 competitors per year, and the event typically lasts between 90 minutes and 2 hours, with a pre-show reception with food and drink.
MK: Why did the team decide that the Virtual Gala be live as opposed to pre-recorded?
MD: So much of the Play Brawl experience is about gathering people together, and putting the audience in control. Play Brawl had originally been scheduled in mid-March, right around when closure orders first started, and only a few days after the first case of COVID-19 in our city. We postponed the event to late June/early July, to give ourselves plenty of time to produce a good experience, and during that time we watched a number of other theatres produce virtual galas and events, often in a bit of a rush so they could still perform on their original date. We found that many theatres chose to pre-record their entire gala, but we didn’t like the distance that was created from the audience. You were all watching a video at the same time, sure, but you weren’t participating in an event. For us, Play Brawl was a participatory experience, and preserving audience choice, feedback, voting, and the sense of a live auction was important to us.
MK: What activities and events were included in this year’s Gala and which were not included?
MD: We worked to preserve as much of the Gala as possible, but we did need to make some adjustments due to the format. With the delay inherent in live broadcast, which can often be up to 60 seconds, running a live auction over the stream was impossible. We instead ran a “silent” auction, where patrons could browse and bid on items from their phones, but we kept the auction running during the stream, and closed the auction and announced winners live during the stream. We also added a raffle prize, which was announced live during the stream.
For the contenders and their performed scenes, we decided to pre-record each scene, and air the recorded clips in the stream. While we would have preferred those segments to also be live, we decided that broadcasting 7 contenders and 12 professional actors live (in addition to the other hosts and performers already on the stream) was too great a challenge. We also were looking for a more highly-produced feel, more like a TV news broadcast with backgrounds behind split-screens, managed arrangement of panelists, side-by-side of multiple panelists and recorded content, title overlays, and such. Broadcast solutions that would have allowed us to gather 15+ individuals on a live broadcast, like Zoom, would have prevented us from doing any of that, confining us to the standard Brady Bunch-grid view.
Instead, to try to maintain a “live” atmosphere even during those recorded clips, we signed on a few “referees,” actors who had worked on past shows at PTC, who joined the broadcast live, watched the clips along with the audience, and provided commentary, feedback, and a bit of laugh track.
MK: How was audience interaction integrated?
MD: Preserving the same level of audience interactivity was extremely important to us. We hosted our stream on YouTube, which provides a very robust chat platform our viewers could use to comment, cheer, and boo (ironically) during the event. We have used the Givesmart platform to handle the live voting/donations in the past, and worked with them again this year to manage votes, donations, and also our pseudo-silent auction. We typically set up registration tables in our lobby to help everyone get set up on their phones with Givesmart, but since that wasn’t possible this year, we also handled ticketing through Givesmart, so everyone would be pre-setup with an account before the event began. This was the first year we have relied on Givesmart to such a degree, and we weren’t completely thrilled with the experience – their platform is still very much designed for live in-person events, and they were unable to accommodate any changes for an online performance.
MK: What was the technology used to make the Gala possible?
MD: When we began to search for vendors and technology to use, our top priority was the integrity of the stream. We wanted to do as much as physically possible to prevent the possibility of a full-stop stream failure, leaving our audience twiddling their thumbs. Every video stream has a single point of failure, the computer generating and encoding the stream, which cannot be made redundant. You can (and should) have a secondary backup stream from the encoder to the publisher (i.e. Youtube), but it’s not really feasible to make the switcher/encoder itself redundant. We were not comfortable with the single point of failure, the main switcher/encoder, being a consumer-grade desktop machine, running on a standard residential internet connection - since the control PC is your biggest point of failure, we wanted it to be as robust as possible.
This ruled out many of the typical software solutions for us, including the leading software in the field, Open Broadcaster Software (OBS), which would have easily offered all the right features for us in terms of motion backgrounds, split-screening, transitions, arrangements, and video clip playback. We tested and considered many other platforms, including Zoom, StreamYard, Livestorm, Mimolive, Restream, ON24, and Wowza, but ran into too many limitations with each, ranging from limits on the number of guests, quantity or length of pre-recorded video clips, limitations on arrangements and backgrounds/transparency, etc.
We eventually decided to use Easylive.io, a cloud-based broadcast solution which seems to be primarily gaining traction in the live sports and e-sports markets. While Easylive is significantly more expensive than most other solutions, they differ because they offer you a private server running a control room, from which you manage and monitor your stream. Your server is virtualized on the Amazon Web Services cloud (AWS), so it is fully insulated from hardware failure – if AWS goes down, it’s enough of an apocalypse that our stream health is the least of our concerns. They support up to 8x live sources on screen at a time, images and overlays, transitions, and many of the other pro features we were looking for. While you cannot “cue” the entire broadcast the way you might in Qlab (down to a single GO button), you can save an unlimited number of Scenes, which you toggle through via Hotkeys.
We broadcast our stream to an unlisted Youtube link, and distributed the link to ticketed patrons the day before the event. In case of a Youtube failure, we also setup a secondary stream running on the AWS Elemental platform, using MediaLive and MediaPackage to provide a simple HTML-5 player, which ran simultaneously to the main Youtube page.
MK: How was the backend integrated during the live performance?
With our city still under a stay-at-home order for non-essential employees, and a business closure order, we didn’t want to have any type of an in-person broadcast studio, or even send a single person into the theatre building. We kept a fairly traditional theatrical-style management structure, with a Stage Manager calling cues, an “ASM” (we called them the Talent Manager) handling the performers, and three operators who could work in the Control Room simultaneously to switch streams, adjust settings, and monitor the output. Easylive provides a MultiView link you can use to share all inputs with the SM and ASM, so they could see everything happening even if it wasn’t live. We also had multiple staff members managing voting/donations, managing the chat, answering donation and tech support phone lines, and more. Most of our video production work was done by Colin Riebel of Theatre Services, who also led operations in the Control Room.
All production staff worked from their homes, and we used open-source software Mumble to provide intercom-style communication over VOIP. We setup a private server (also hosted on AWS EC2) and were able to configure a multi-channel structure, assign a Stage Manager who could speak to the whole team (a “god mic”), and even setup an in-ear foldback system speaking in-ear to each onscreen guest to cue them to start/stop, communicate important chat messages, updates, and large donations. This enabled us to handle a huge number of tasks, and our audience felt just as taken care of as they would have on-site. In reality, our team was scattered across 3 states in 2 time zones, which was a very trippy experience. It felt just like real tech/show call, with cues, holds, god-mic announcements, and even gathering in a channel called "Green Room" on 15's and pre/post rehearsal.
Distributing our infrastructure and team was very important - between programming, rehearsals, and even during the event, everybody (including the primary video ops) had something go wrong, having to reboot their computers for one reason or another, crashes, internet blips, tree trimmers threatening power lines, all kinds of nonsense. If we had run OBS on any particular computer, we would have had a full-stop failure of the stream.
MK: What is important about licenses?
MD: It’s important to obtain broadcast or sync rights to all copyrighted content used in your stream. We were careful with the music we used, primarily using royalty-free or unlicensed music wherever possible. Theatres have historically run a little fast-and-loose with copyright and licenses in their live performances, but the Internet is (ironically) a much more public venue than what we’re used to. Many platforms, especially Youtube, have automated systems constantly searching for any infringement in your streams and videos, and they will find your clip eventually. You cannot cut corners with licensing online.
MK: You used YouTube as your streaming platform. What worked and what didn’t? Would you recommend considering other platforms?
MD: We selected Youtube because many of our patrons were already familiar with the platform, and already had accounts. Many were even comfortable enough they would be able to “cast” the stream to their Smart TV or Roku, which we felt was the ideal viewing experience. Youtube also offered an easy-to-use chat feature, which was easy to moderate, and helped us push text-based announcements throughout the Gala. We had a tech support hotline setup to handle folks who had trouble, but they received less than 10 calls.
Other low-friction platforms (Twitch, Facebook Live, Twitter) didn’t offer an “unlisted” stream, where we could handle the link distribution. We didn’t want to use a 3rd-party paid or pay-on-demand service (like ShowTix4U), or anything which would require guests to login or have a password, which would just increase complexity for our guests. We wanted to keep tabs on who was watching the broadcast, but since tickets were available for free on multiple occasions, we weren’t too concerned with maintaining a strict paywall.
However, YouTube’s “Content ID” system is the best in the industry, and will catch absolutely any music on a clip in your stream. While in an uploaded clip that can just affect your monetization status, or show ads on your video, detection in a live feed can lead to your stream being taken down. They picked up 5 seconds of "Level Up" played in a clip from TikTok, 3 seconds of "We are the Champions" in the background of a some B-roll of an old production, and even matched music we had legitimately purchased sync rights to. The short answer, it doesn't matter if you own the rights or not, or if the clip is fair use or not - Youtube will find it, and may pull your stream. Their proposed solution is for you to dispute the copyright claim after-the-fact, which doesn't work for live streams. We had to replace all music, including music we had purchased legitimate sync-rights licenses to, with royalty-free music we purchased.
We discovered after-the-fact that there is a way to request a rightsholder to “whitelist” your channel after you have purchased the rights, but the process is overly complex (you make the request to the rights-holder, who then has to request it from the 3rd-party Content ID provider, who then goes to Youtube…), error-prone, and has a very long lead time. I even ran into some anecdotal accounts of musicians who can’t use their own music on live streams, because the whitelisting process is so spotty.
MK: What was the rehearsal process like? Any suggestions for other artists?
Allow plenty of time in your rehearsals for technical issues. We requested that every live guest hardwire into their router with Ethernet, and use wired headphones to listen/speak. We checked in with each in advance, did one-on-one setup sessions, and had cables and adapters shipped out to whoever needed them. Even then, we ran into a number of issues ranging from cheap headsets that leak signal between the speaker/microphone (causing an echo), Bluetooth connection/disconnection/interference issues, dongle-mania, software issues, power plugs... the list goes on and on. Every time we'd get a guest squared away, something goes wrong with another. Allow plenty of time for troubleshooting, multiple sound checks, and design your show in a way that failure of a guest does not stop the show. Even the host - have a backup plan. Have someone on staff dedicated to troubleshooting if you can. Prior to this event, I had seen companies like PRG creating ready-to-ship Pelican cases with laptops/webcams/adapters/etc. already setup, for people who are being presented remotely. I thought those were silly, but I would happily pay hundreds for those now.
It's also better to do multiple rehearsals on multiple days, rather than try to knock it all out in one day. Think 3x 3-hour rehearsals over 3 days, rather than one 9-hour day. That gives you more chances for things to go wrong with each guest setup, and many of the changes that would typically be quick adjustments in the theatre (cutting a line, for instance) can mean going back to a video editor, re-rendering a clip, and re-uploading – not something you can do live. Give your video team a day to respond to changes, and come back tomorrow to check the changes.
MK: Anything you'd like to add?
Live-streaming is a completely different skill set for traditional live-theatre artists, and we’re all learning and adapting as quickly as we can. We tried to bring a lot of elements from traditional theatre into the virtual world, and it gave us a strong base of understanding to work from, which was helpful for the team. Start with what you know, and figure things out one step at a time!
Matt Davis is the Production Manager at the Philadelphia Theatre Company, a LORT theatre which produces, develops, and presents entertaining and imaginative contemporary theatre focused on the American experience. Learn more at www.philatheatreco.org, or subscribe to @philatheatreco on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Matt is also the author of Intellectual Property for Producing Theatres, a handbook which aims to help theatre managers better navigate copyright and other legal topics.
