Drifting into Q2

Q2 got off to an exciting start for us, with the first round of the British Drift Championships. No we weren’t racing, we were at Teesside Autodrome to give new owner Matt Stephenson a new feel for the livestreams. The season travels the UK hitting famous tracks such as Driftland in Scotland, the NEC (not a track per se but a great venue) and, a personal favourite from bike racing, Three Sisters in Wigan.

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Some highlights

The season contract is not a simple ‘turn up and stream’ style job. We’ve been tasked with creating a new scoring system for the judges, assisting in event scheduling to ensure the fans at home and in venue have the best possible experience and working alongside app developers Reach to work on creating a more interactive experience such as audience voting.

  • Audience Interaction

  • Scoring System with tablet functionality

  • Multi-camera replays

  • Live drone footage

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The Challenges

If there’s something we like its a challenge; we’re a pretty competitive group so challenges to us are just another way to win. This is our first motorsport contract and we can’t thank British Drift enough for putting their faith in us, but being a first for anything brings it’s complications, unforeseen problems and late nights.

  • Our production suite and the commentary tower were in the middle of the track but one of our cameras needed to be 100’s of metres away and the other side of the track. Solved: Fibre, static rope to hold cables between a large can and the race control hut, power ‘stolen’ from a floodlight.

  • The judges needed on demand replays from different angles, rapidly. Solved: Two replay operators, two replay PC’s and a new shuttle.

  • Drone footage - we knew this would be game changing but drone batteries only last a short time. Solved: MANY batteries and two drone operators.

  • High wind and rain; well it was pretty ambitious to have an event in Middlesborough in April! Solved: well future solved - from now on we will be using an OB van for the drift events which has the added advantage of a faster set up the day before, allowing more time for content creation. Our amazing camerastaff had to stand out in the cold and rain all weekend so we supplied them with kit from local brand Rab, to ensure they stayed as warm and dry as possible.

The next round is in May, all the way up in Scotland, and has a whole new set of challenges - there’s no power or internet! Bring it on.

Our WorkElspeth WadsworthDRIFT