There is no question that in the live performance universe, magic often happens when you take the artists out of their comfort zones.
This is exactly what the minds behind Skyville Live, an Emmy Award-winning online music series that brings iconic musicians and emerging talent together with an intimate live audience, set out to achieve upon its early 2015 launch.
Set at Skyville Live Studios in the heart of Nashville, the intimate venue invites an interactive environment between performers and the approximately 300 attendees. As rising star Jason Isbell said to Kris Kristofferson from the stage during a recent Skyville Live show, “I didn’t realize I’d be standing right in front of you singing your song.” That intimacy has translated well to a live streaming audience that continues to grow with each episode.
And while the big names that Skyville Live books continue to attract more viewers—at the time of this article, the last show scheduled was the September 15th Americanafest with Graham Nash, Ricky Skaggs, Lee Ann Womack, The Milk Carton Kids, The Secret Sisters, and River Whyless—the impressive live production experience certainly plays a big role in bringing audiences back.
Planting The Seeds
Wally Wilson came to Nashville from Texas as a bassist and piano player.
He quickly found work on Music Row playing live and recording with various country and R&B acts, before transitioning into songwriting and production work in the late 1980s. He and a friend soon launched a publishing company called Skyville Music Publishing.
Wilson discovered a knack for developing talent, and as the music business went through change, he saw an opportunity.
“As we continued to develop new talent, we found there were increasingly fewer places for young artists to perform,” says Wilson. “I would take them to a small club downtown called The Basement. We’ve had five or six acts play, and it caught onto the point where we were approached about doing a reality show.”
While Wilson declined that opportunity, the seeds were planted for Skyville Live.
“I thought, ‘If I can stream this from my studio with 100 people in the audience, that automatically doubles capacity and presents an opportunity to connect with a much larger audience online,’” Wilson says. “We did, and we drew 12,000 viewers with our first experiment. That’s when we knew we were onto something.”
Wilson and his team invested in a 10,000-square-foot space that became Skyville Live Studios, and quickly got to work booking talent and building a production team.
Skyville Live executive producer Bryan Lee works closely with Wilson on the strategic vision around show production.
“I worked at Sony Pictures and Microsoft over about 20 years before moving into independent production,” says Lee. “I was introduced to Wally through mutual friends with the idea that my experience could help to evolve the show’s business model. We came together like peanut butter and jelly, and everything we do overlaps.” Lee, in fact, joined the team after the episode featuring Kristofferson, Isbell, Brandy Clark, and Lady Antebellum had aired.
“He created this model of natural pairings with musical icons and newer artists,” explains Lee, “and we’ve since added spice by creating what we loosely call ‘magic moments’ that introduces artists to different musical styles, and often invites collaboration. This is where we really started to build a name as a differentiator.”
Lee then started to look at further evolving the production, working closely with Emmy Award winners TNDV (video production) and Mills Logan (audio production) to introduce cutting-edge technologies and innovating streaming models.
“We’ve been referred to by many as music television for the iPhone generation, and it does reflect much of what we do,” says Lee. “Everything we do from a production standpoint is focused on the audience.
This includes a lean-back perspective of looking at a big screen, and a lean-forward model of watching on your phone. Our content lives as both hour-plus long-form content, and as individual segments that last just a few minutes. That’s been very important to our growth.”
While Lee is proud to note that this strategy has somewhat “flipped the model,” he is quick to point out that they treat Skyville Live very much like a traditional TV show. The production experience is set up so that the cameras catch exactly what is happening on stage and in the venue. That strategy allows the content to live for a larger audience beyond those in the room.
This is language that TNDV president and owner Nic Dugger fully agrees with, especially since most of what happens visually is executed by his Nashville-based mobile production team.
“Skyville Live is a shining example of how streaming video and live musical performance can be presented as a professional broadcast TV program,” says Dugger. “The dedication to quality assures that every production element across staging, lighting, video, and audio comes together seamlessly.”
On quick glance, the complement of video equipment that TNDV brings to the table is standard for many live productions. Working mostly out of the company’s Elevation HD truck—one of eight trucks in its fleet—a typical production includes up to ten Hitachi HD1000 cameras, an integrated signal router/multiviewer from Imagine Communications to move and monitor video/audio/data signals, and a multi-channel intercom matrix from RTS to establish communication across all production personnel.
TNDV also provides an arsenal of audio gear for Logan to work with, a Studer Vista X audio production console, ProTools audio recording, and a high-end audience response microphone kit.
However, since Lee began looking for new innovations in the production model, Dugger has been quick to introduce new tools to the set.
“One of the early performances featured Steve Earle, and as he launched into ‘Copperhead Road,’ we faced an enormous technical and creative challenge capturing so many musicians onstage,” says Dugger. “We couldn’t position our handheld camera operators both in front and behind him fast enough to shoot the song to the director’s wishes. Basically, we weren’t quite able to transition between Steve and the background musicians in a quick and efficient manner.”
Dugger notes that while adding a jib to the stage to work overhead would solve this problem in a bigger venue, this wasn’t an option in the intimate confines of Skyville Live Studios. After some evaluation with Lee and Wilson, he determined that adding Wire-Cam, a custom system developed by Nashville’s Blackhawk Cinema, would solve the problem.
“The Wire-Cam allowed us to remain 10-15' above the performers’ heads as it could fly from the front of house to backstage, and we had the ability to pan, tilt, and zoom as the camera flew overhead,” he says. “We could capture Steve and then move behind him to the drummers and guitar players very quickly, all while maintaining a very smooth shot. That’s one example of a specialized technology that has become a staple in all Skyville Live productions.”
Stay tuned for Part Two!
Brian Galante is president of Dimension PR, based near Portland, ME. He is quite witty and handsome and is a good cook.