Militia Broadcast is the production team behind some of South Africa’s standout live
events of the past few years, including Johannesburg’s Sowing the Seeds festival
and Mumford & Sons’ summer concerts.
Now the talented team is giving music fans the opportunity to enjoy exclusive
performances from the latest artists from across all musical genres with the launch
of Militia 24/7, a live stream showcasing Militia’s “Urban Sessions’ series. Eban
Olivier from Militia tells us more about the venture and takes us through the
solution that is across the team’s events schedule as well as its streaming solution.
“In a nutshell, the Urban Sessions are an hour long performance by either a band or
a DJ in an empty studio. We’d been producing these sessions for ourselves for more
than a year now, slotting in performances when we were in between live event
responsibilities. We finally had time recently to reflect on the volume of content
we’d produced, and realized that we had enough sessions to play back to back for
almost two weeks, so we looked at setting up a channel to do just that.
“We believe our sessions are all shot in a unique way; we tend to adopt an
observational approach and give the artists a neutral canvas with very cool,
minimalistic lighting. In doing so we make the artist’s performance our primary
focus, and it ensures everyone on a level par in terms of staging. We’ve had some
previously unheard of artists who have come into the sessions and have blown us
all away.
“When it comes to live production, we cut a tight show, which is produced using a
studio rig built around Blackmagic Design. That same hardware is what we use as
part of our rental and staging business, so we know that it is reliable and will give
us fantastic quality. Blackmagic’s range of studio cameras gives you a one fibre,
drop down solution for acquisition that allows live [primary] grading, talkback and
tally as well as a return program feed, all of which are essential in any live
production. No one else comes close as far as price versus functionality is
concerned.
“So, for example, all of the colouring is done live using the ATEM Camera Control
software with our Blackmagic Studio Cameras, and the live mix is streamed via
Facebook Live or another third party provider, while a master is captured on a
HyperDeck Studio Pro within the hour. The response to the live streams has been
fantastic, with good viewing figures, and I think this is a testament to the balance
we have struck with having not only professional live production kit for our content,
but complementing this with high-quality streaming providers. There’s no point
investing in an Ultra HD 4K workflow, only to deliver to a substandard stream.’
