This past weekend we did a live stream of a roller derby event called Hard Block Life. It was an interesting project that posed unique challenges.
The budget was very small. However, this was an especially important one to make good-looking, because it was an international event, which meant international viewers. We streamed the event as 8 separate streams, one for each match.
the tech of a roller derby stream
We used 3 cameras for the production, all connected to an ATEM Mini Pro -switcher. One of the cameras served as a general wide-angle view of the entire arena. Another was a manned zoom camera for following the action on the track. The third one we used was a miscellaneous camera, which we mostly pointed at the penalty box during matches. We cut into a picture-in-picture view with this camera in the corner whenever something was going on in the box. This way the viewers could see the action and whoever was waiting to be released.
The sound came from 4 sources:
- 2 microphones for the commentators
- one from the wide camera that picked up the ambience of the arena
- and one from the computer that ran music during breaks and the intro (more on that later)
The tournament used the CRG-scoreboard program, which thankfully has a robust stream overlay built-in. We could control which views were visible from an iPad, and just loaded in the webview overlay in OBS.
Other graphics that we used were:
- a splash screen with a timer
- a slideshow of the sponsors
- a simple stinger animation
- and an intro that I cut together from last year’s national championship finals
how did the stream go?
We had some technical problems for a couple of the matches, but solved those without missing any major parts of the event. Because the budget and production schedule didn’t allow us to setup in advance, we had to build this whole gig in only 2 hours from doors open to the first game starting. That’s less than 2 hours before the stream had to be up.
For future rollerderby events, I would focus on the following things:
- Backup recordings (The recordings of the games are used as verification) in case the computer crashes or other problems occur
- More time to build the production and run tests
- Meeting the commentators before the event (They are usually players too, which means they are stressed out during the event and don’t have time to discuss much)
Despite some minor problems the weekend was a success, every consecutive stream being better than the last. Considering the resources available, we did an amazing job.
The roller derby stream can be seen on Youtube. Especially this game was an exciting match, and I do believe the stream viewers liked it.
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