ITV Studios Drama Festival: Content Showcase

  • Natalie Davies

Client: ITV Stakeholders: Ruth Berry, Managing Director, ITV Studios (Global Distribution) & Maria Kyriacou, President, International, ITV Studios Role: Project Manager

Description:
Held at London’s iconic Roundhouse on Wednesday 20th February , the award-winning ITV Studios Drama Festival saw over 400 delegates experience a range of new titles from ITV Studios production labels and leading independent producers.
Stakeholder Feedback:
"I am still buzzing from the most AMAZING Drama Festival event that we hosted yesterday at the Round House. I truly believe what I said that we have the best team in the business, and I am extremely proud of all of our teams and our phenomenal content. It was an incredible afternoon - immersive, professional, slick, gripping, and totally kick ass! Thank you to everyone who made it happen, especially Adrian, Jo and Mich but a real team effort from so many of you. I've had so many lovely messages from producers and clients that all stand us out from our competitors on both the scale of the event and how incredibly impressive it was, and on the content itself - placing us as the distributor with the best drama in the market! I'm immensely proud of that and hope you are too. Thank you again for being so kick ass!"
Ruth Berry, Managing Director, ITV Studios (Global Distribution)

"Wow wow wow. I thought this was the most impressive sales event I have ever seen in all my many years in tv. Well done to all of you. You should be rightfully proud of yourselves."
Maria Kyriacou, President, International, ITV Studios
“Our ambition for the second annual ITV Studios Drama Festival was to create a fully immersive screening experience which put our customers at the very heart of our new drama content. Hawthorn, working alongside our creative agencies, were able to deliver a solution which ingeniously utilised the iconic Roundhouse space - with jaw-dropping results”
Adrian Last, EVP, Director of ITV Studios Marketing
Featuring a spectacular 360-degree projection, the audience was immersed in a world of storytelling; showcasing some of the most exciting upcoming titles, such as World War Two drama World On Fire and screen adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s Noughts + Crosses.
(Initial CAD Plans)
Making the most of the impressive birdcage architecture, a larger than life 360-degree projection solution was adopted. The main hero screen measuring 14.3m x 6.79m was created using two Barco UDX-4K32 projectors and delivered full 4K playback, with a total canvas size of 19k x 2k resulting in an image size of 39 megapixels.
(Entrance View - 360 External Projection)
(Internal View - 360 Internal Projection)
65 metres of custom-made voile draping were installed around the venue’s iconic pillars to allow the content to seamlessly run out from the central screen, completely enveloping the space.
A staggering 21 Panasonic RZ970 laser projectors were used to display content between the pillars, producing a combined brightness of 250,000 lumens of light output, this created 19 screens, working alongside the hero screen to create the 360-degree experience - That’s more projectors than the Brits!
The latest 24 core 200m MTP fibre cables were employed to transmit HD and 4k signals to the projectors. The MTP cable encased 24 individual cores of fibre within a single cable, if run individually this would result in over 2km of independent fibre lines.
The content was programmed and delivered using 3 disguise 4x4 video servers delivering 19 HD feeds to the voile projection with a fully redundant understudy and 2 disguise 2x4 media servers delivering a single 4k output to the main screen, also with a dedicated understudy and all with automatic failover protection.
The entire system was delivered via a linked e2 graphics switcher using the latest 4k HDMI 2.0 input and output cards. The e2 allowed further redundancy in the system and additional capacity for external sources and PIPs to be added if required. This area was coined as ‘NASA’ and managed a whopping 2.9tb of content!
It wasn’t just the video content that delivered an immersive audience experience. The in-house sound equipment was repurposed to create a 5.1 surround sound system. This, combined with the 360-degree projection, created a completely immersive viewing experience for the audience, putting them right in the heart of the action.
With the video content taking centre stage, a simplistic lighting design was used to enhance the event environment whilst ensuring the on-stage panel speakers were beautifully lit. Working alongside the in-house lighting rig, the team installed new front, side and back lighting using Clay Paky Scenius Profiles. Not only did the fixtures effectively light the stage, they also ensured minimal light spill onto the 4k hero screen.
Contracted four months before the event, the Grade II listed status of the Roundhouse brought both prestige and challenge to the project. Whilst the team were intent on protecting and complementing the iconic architecture and history of the building, the boundaries of creativity and technology needed to be pushed in order to deliver on the desired objectives and offer up an experience like no other for the audience.
The venue’s rigorous health and safety regulations were a challenge from conception to delivery; during the three month long production tender several creative solutions were discounted due to unique restrictions and infeasibility, adding pressure from the outset to ensure that the finalised solution would be achievable within the space and timescale. Once agreed, finding a seating solution that would cater for the guest capacity and comply with regulations was the next challenge to overcome.
More often than not working with exclusive content adds complexity as footage tends to be available very last minute and sourcing can involve numerous levels of sign off. Much of these logistical challenges called for clear pre-planning, strong relationships and expert timing to produce the staggering 2.9tb of bespoke content to the quality level required.
Due to audience feedback, the decision was made to strip out the immersive elements from the 2018 event and direct all energy into the content delivery; a bold statement and one that required further meticulous attention to ensure the canvas could not only be used to showcase content but also double up as a reversed projection surface for animated advertising during the arrival and drinks receptions.
Once the raw footage was sourced, over an hour’s worth of bespoke 360-degree content was created by way of promos, reels, EPK, GFX and graphic animations. Throughout this process, the content was constantly evolving and the creatives needed to adapt to ever-changing goal posts. In the end the content was put together in 74 edit days between 18 editors, and 18 GFX days between 3 designers, across 10 weeks.
Once ingested, the finalised content took a total of 76 man days on site to be realised in the venue, with 12 hours spent lining up the projection mapping and 2 hours programming the order of content, complementary lighting states and rehearsing.
Each year, the fortnight preceding the Drama Festival sees buyers travel from all over the world to attend multiple competitor showcases; a hard audience to impress as they have seen it all before. This year’s tactic was to take even more creative and technological risks to ensure that the bespoke content was delivered in a bold and unforgettable way. Not only did this chosen format stand out from competition, it generated the desired talkability and buzz around the priority titles for the second year running.
As a result of the event, the ITV Studios brand was catapulted into a world class bracket, with clients on the day commenting that the event had raised the bar for competing events. The event not only helped kick start sales conversations, but buyers were still talking about its effectiveness at MIPTV the following month; asking for ‘save the date’ information so they could plan their buyers schedules in advance.
Although not a primary aim, the experience also generated trade press attention from Deadline, Variety, TBI, C21 and Rapid News; all of which were positive reviews.
We also reached out to some of our expert partners to see what they thought about the event and here’s what they had to say:
“We were absolutely delighted to have been chosen to deliver the technical production for the ITV Studios Drama Festival. The fantastic in-house experiences team at ITV Studios always strive to turn the traditional screening experience on its head which is technically challenging but endlessly exciting for us here at Hawthorn. The final solution put the audience right in the centre of the storytelling, making the most of the iconic Roundhouse birdcage to ensure they were completely enveloped by the spectacular new drama content.”
Scott Rooney-Ashby, Account Director, Hawthorn
“After a successful collaboration on the ITV Drama Festival in 2018 - Zealot and ITV won the Promax Award for creativity. [Promax award winning reel: https://wdrv.it/381a95f32]. In 2019 - The team was led mostly by Zealot’s Creative Director Ben Walker and Head Designer Kristaps Kazaks and although we kept in constant contact with the ITV team, we didn’t have anything tangible to show until the deadline approached. This was a risk both Zealot and ITV were confident to take, and our trust in each other paid off. The collaboration between ITV and Zealot had been successfully completed when we all left the Roundhouse with one thought: How will we top this in 2020?”
Shaun Farrington, Creative Director, Zealot
“As one of the most architecturally astounding and unique spaces in London, the Roundhouse started its days as a railway shed to repair and turn locomotives, hence its unmistakable circular shape. When ITV came to our venue for their drama festival, they made the most of our round architecture, juxtaposing the Grade II listed building with modern technology. By cleverly mapping projections between the pillars, ITV turned the space into a 360 degree screen, revolutionising the classic screening format. The team were a pleasure to work with, and we were very proud to collaborate with them on this event. Many of our clients have only dreamed of delivering a setup like this, but none have mastered it the way ITV did - it was very impressive."
Hannah Pierce, Head of Events, The Roundhouse
“The ITV Drama Festival is considered within our agency to be a highly successful project. Not only were we able to develop super creative content - from promos to motion artwork - we experienced the most productive collaboration in the 7 years of Ignition Creative London’s existence. Not only was the communication between client and ourselves seamless we also liaised closely with two other agencies tasked with creating content for the event. There were no competitive blockers, we had free flow of comms and this was imperative to ease the pressure of tight deadlines and high volume of deliverables. This was an ambitious project, in a small time frame with many challenges - all overcome with an openness to work together and determination to exceed expectations. We are proud of what was achieved and very much look forward to making next year's event bigger and better.”
Gemma Stone, Managing Director, Ignition Creative
“The ITV Studios Drama Festival is a slightly unique project for us as it requires collaboration from all walks of the distribution business. The process of navigating between stakeholders and suppliers can often be challenging; especially when there are as many as this project requires to manage. I can honestly say what a pleasure it was for the team and I to work with familiar and new partners this year. Even through the slightly nerve-wracking times, it was a comfort to know that we were surrounded by not only the best people for the job, but individuals that share the same ambition and passion for the projects success.”
Jo Morris, Senior Project Manager, ITV Experiences
“Working alongside some of the best creative minds in the business, what we produced in February was one of the highlights of my time at ITV. The level of collaborative support was unwavering throughout the creative process and the content we showcased challenged the traditional norm. Despite the technically complicated nature of what we were trying to achieve, the passion and hard work of everyone involved gave me absolute faith that we were going to create something special with the agencies we had trusted with our content.”
Michelle Asik, VP, Head of Global Brand Marketing, ITV Studios
According to verbatim feedback captured on the day and post-event, the experience was perceived as industry leading by attendees and survey results show the overall rating of the experience grew from 70% to 85% year-on-year. Due to an extremely successful communications campaign, it was a sell out against audience targets once again. With 406 total guests, the audience grew from 38% from the previous year, with 14% of this audience growth representing clients and with the total turnout performing 101% over the targeted audience figure, further cementing the event as a must have ticket within a saturated events calendar.
“What an amazing afternoon - I can’t wait for the 2020 event!”
2019 attendee

Skills