Gravity Media’s Production Centre White City has gone live with newly awarded client Formula E kicking off with the remote broadcast support live from the ABB Formula E World Championship Series 9.
Now in its ninth season, the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship will race in Hyderabad this Saturday, the first time the series has visited India with the race airing live in the UK on Channel 4 and Eurosport from 9am GMT.
Formula E will be the centre’s first anchor client, with Gravity Media having signed a multi-year deal to partner with the championship, and house the Formula E team in their new facility based in White City.
The Production Centre housed in The Westworks building is a media hub made up of production, post-production, and live studios. The 50,000-square-foot facility supports both on-premise and distributed remote production workflows.
Gravity Media’s brand new state-of-the-art facility is based around a 2110 IP media fabric with dedicated master control rooms, six dedicated production control rooms with dedicated audio control rooms, seven flexi control rooms, multiple off-tube commentary booths, two studios, lighting and vision control facilities, fast turnaround and craft edit, flexi desk production spaces, media management and client desking.
The Gravity Media talented team worked closely as the technical broadcast partner with Formula E and Aurora Media Worldwide responsible for the delivery live on location beginning with the first Formula E race of the season in Mexico ensuring 86 services and video feeds were delivered back to the Production Centre in White City.
Two bespoke Gravity Media technical pods were built especially for Formula E. One of the pods has been engineered to house the MCR and all of the Technical IP backbone and the other pod houses the Audio and Comms core as well as the trackside Audio Supervisor.
Gravity Media’s Speciality Camera team were also deployed with a total of 50 cameras at the Mexico race, including twenty six Sony line cameras and twenty four Gravity Media Minicams used for track and team garage shots.
The ABB FIA Formula E World Championship is set to race in 11 iconic world cities this season, where the Gravity Media team will continue to capture the track coverage where twenty four cameras will be set up across the street circuits from Jakarta, Berlin, Monaco to Sao Paulo, Cape Town, and Hyderabad. The live programme will then be cut remotely at Gravity Media’s Production Centre in White City.
Gravity Media has been awarded an ISO accreditation, certified for the ISO14001 and ISO45001 “ensuring Gravity Media is committed to a framework so as to reduce its environmental impact.” Gravity Media has also designed a solution enabling Formula E to reduce the number of jumbo jets used to transport their event internationally decreasing the number of planes needed to transport the kit in.
The kick off race of the season in Mexico was broadcast to over 40 broadcasters and platforms including Channel 4, Eurosport, Fox Sports, CBS, ProSieben and Mediaset.
Ed Tischler Gravity Media’s Managing Director of EMEA says: “We are thrilled to announce that we have won this contract, welcoming the Formula E team to our new home as our first in house anchor client. Using our next-generation brand new Gravity Media Production Centre in White City ensures Formula E’s broadcast media needs can be solved in-house through our cutting-edge media and technology solutions. Our new Production Centre located in the heart of White City in The Westworks building will house our growing team of creative and innovative media specialists. With our strong technical pedigree and well-established experience of complex live, fast turnaround and postproduction workflows – the powerful network of connected Gravity Media remote Production Centres, coupled with expertise delivering turnkey solutions will continue to offer productions a unique range of options and flexibility. We look forward to a great year of races!”
Aarti Dabas, Chief Media Officer, Formula E, says of the partnership and joining Gravity Media’s Production Centre White City: “At Formula E, as the world’s first net zero carbon sport since inception, we are constantly challenging ourselves to show how delivering world-class sports entertainment and maintaining industry-leading sustainable practices can co-exist without compromise. Our technology and broadcast team have worked closely with Gravity Media and Aurora Media Worldwide to help us achieve this. The London-based facility and new approach to presenting Formula E coverage helps us stay true to our vision of accelerating human progress and encouraging the adoption of EV transportation while entertaining millions of viewers around the world.”

Jon Creamer

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