They say never work with animals, but in summer 2015 Trickbox TV provided an HD multi-camera flyaway facility for Flockstars, Liberty Bell’s new primetime knockout competition for ITV that saw a group of eight stars learning to herd sheep (and ducks) and take part in sheepdog trials. The 8x30min show went live on ITV on 30 July.
The competition was filmed over a nine day period at an equestrian centre in East Sussex. Trickbox TV worked with Liberty Bell for two months prior to the shoot to meticulously plan the production workflow, and supplied and installed seven Sony HDC-1500 camera channels, a six-channel EVS server and a flyaway control room, with 10 operational positions. Trickbox TV also supplied on-site technical support staff throughout the production.
The core brief was that the production team was producing a studio show that just happened to be an outside broadcast, so the Trickbox TV team paid specific attention to providing all the features and functions that would be expected in a studio – everything from the control room lighting, to air-con, to OLED monitors throughout.
Verity Jackson, Line Producer on Flockstars, said, “The Trickbox TV team worked incredibly hard in pre-production and during the set-up to ensure that the production would run without any issues, and it all worked fantastically well in an unusual and complicated location. We greatly appreciated their attention to detail and calmness throughout, it gave us great confidence that the technical side was taken care of.”
