Skyville Live Merges Streaming And Live Production, Part Two

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.

Be sure to read Part One.

Light And Sound

TNDV maintains a close relationship with other technical production arms on the greater Skyville Live team. On the lighting side, this includes VER and renowned lighting director Jeff Gordon.

“Broadcast television typically does not have excellent lighting, so Wally is absolutely leveraging his live music experience when it comes to the lighting strategy for this show,” says TNDV president and owner Nic Dugger. “We provide them with color-grading broadcast monitors and routing control from the truck so that they can see what the lighting schemes look like to both the audience in the venue and online viewers around the world. And Jeff sits in the truck to communicate his vision and what he sees to the board operator in the venue.

“We are setting up our cameras as VER is hanging their key lights and very powerful moving lights,” continues Dugger. “All of this matches the mood and tone of the music, which of course is very important to the work Mills is doing on the audio production side.”

Recording and mix engineer Mills Logan has quite a resume when it comes to professional recording and mixing, having worked with artists ranging from Trey Anastasio and Joe Walsh to Martina McBride and Kenny Rogers. He has also served as country music heavyweight Toby Keith’s main recording engineer for the past decade.

“I first worked with Nic and the TNDV team about four years ago on a benefit concert in Oklahoma that Toby Keith put on for the victims of the tornado,” says Logan. “When Wally approached me about doing audio production work for Skyville Live, they were using a couple of handheld video cameras and inquired about running a snake across the street from the current Skyville Live shooting stage to the original Skyville Live studio to support the audio recording. Their first big official show was coming up with Martina McBride, Gladys Knight, and Estelle. Seeing this as a very high profile gig, I looked up Nic and went across town to meet him. I introduced him to Wally, and they were brought on board. That’s how I became their broadcast audio and remix engineer.”

Logan works on board Elevation or Exclamation—a second, larger TNDV truck—for every show. On a typical show day, TNDV brings Elevation on site around 8am, and Logan confers with TNDV audio engineer Adam Ellis, whom he works closely with for each show. They begin setting up the Studer console and a remote stagebox for all microphone connections. The setup can accommodate up to 64 mic inputs, but recent shows have required as many as 128 inputs.

“We have a nice line-level feed that runs over fiber optic lines from the stagebox, and once everything is plugged in at the splitter, everything runs digital back to the truck,” explains Logan. “This assures that the audio is of utmost quality. Lately, I’ve added an EMI Curve Bender EQ, which brings a very rich character to the audio. I’ve also incorporated a Smart C1 stereo compressor, and at the end, I use a Manley Slam limiter that helps me boost my levels. This is similar to the work I do with recording studio mixes where everything has to be loud. Although it doesn’t get quite that loud for Skyville Live, it raises the volume to achieve a nice, snappy broadcast mix.”

Most of the other audio processing takes place on the Studer console, including individual channel EQ and compression. From there, everything is recorded in ProTools at 24/48. Logan records all rehearsals, including the official dress rehearsal before the live show.

Mills notes that he appreciates the freedom that Skyville Live founder Wally Wilson gives him on audio productions, and his penchant for encouraging direct communication across other production arms allows him to provide input and advice that others find beneficial, similar to Dugger’s close collaboration with the lighting teams.

“Wally’s attention to detail means I can spend as much time as I need to make these mixes the best I can, which I believe is an important part of our success with Skyville Live,” says Logan. “One of the early things he shared was that he didn’t want this show to sound like an underwhelming awards show that you see on TV. He gives me the time to make the show sound its best, and also work with the staging team to reposition microphones and other gear—things that cross those lines from being just a standard audio engineer.”

Virtual Integration

The staging foremost remains the vision of Wilson, though Skyville executive produver Bryan Lee and others have added color with each show. At its core, however, Wilson’s vision for Skyville Live’s staging is what makes the series so special.

“We deliberately made the stage very small to ensure that intimacy translates to the stream,” explains Wilson. “The stage is approximately six or seven inches tall, and we seat the artists right at the edge. It’s somewhat intimidating, and aligns with our strategy of taking artists out of their comfort zone, yet ensuring they find a new comfort zone.”

The general staging setup supplies teleprompters for performers, who are also within a few steps of a microphone. There is enough open space for artists to move freely and connect with audience members seated at tables in front of the stage.

And like the addition of the Wire-Cam, the proximity of the stage has also encouraged Skyville Live to explore working with other emerging technologies.

This includes virtual reality technology, which TNDV employed for a March 2017 episode featuring Melissa Etheridge and several top female country, rock, and urban music artists.

The collective goal was to explore how virtual reality could amplify the visual and musical powers of the Skyville Live streaming experience.

“We shot the concert with a Nokia OZO+ 360° virtual reality camera to test the value and effectiveness of VR in an intimate live performance setting,” says Dugger. “Our test videos demonstrate how viewers with VR headsets or watching on a media player can pan around the venue to see what’s happening from every direction.”

In this production, TNDV’s Nokia OZO+ virtual reality camera integrated a sphere of eight lenses within a single camera body and a global shutter to capture stereoscopic 360° imagery with spectacular 16K video resolution. 

In addition to overhead acquisition with Wire-Cam, dynamic camera moves are also captured using Steadicam, which is operated by a seasoned Steadicam operator and his assistant. The Steadicam allows the operator to move the camera freely around the venue in order to capture the musical performances from creative angles.

“These shots prove that we can effectively capture and deliver a full, immersive 360° perspective of the show without disrupting the multi-camera HD production mode our viewers have come to love,” says Lee. “It allows us to ultimately offer the consumer the traditional, director-driven perspective from multiple locations as well as a front row seat.”

Lee notes that they intend to continue shooting special episodes with this technology to better understand the dynamics of VR technology, and how they can most effectively apply the results so that viewers can freely navigate around the venue, zoom in on performers, and otherwise leverage the benefits of this technology to enhance their experience.

“There is still some work to do before bringing the results to viewers in an episodic format, including how to make the rear 180° viewpoint more interesting for viewers; and how a multi-camera approach might add more to the overall VR production element,” he explains. “But since the inception of Skyville Live, through to the winning of our multiple Emmy awards, we have been pushing the envelope at every step. The chance to push the envelope again in the realm of deep immersion with 360° video is a very compelling opportunity.”

“There’s no question we have a running wish list. We continue to make changes with every show,” notes Wilson. “We’re continuing to evolve our technical production and attract amazing new and iconic talent, and we have some very exciting shows on the horizon. The sky is the limit with the team we have assembled.”                   

Brian Galante is president of Dimension PR, based near Portland, ME. He is quite witty and handsome and is a good cook.