Country in the City:
Garth Brooks Goes 4K
with Sony and AMV
Garth Brooks’ production teams are used to putting on live extravaganzas above and beyond their normal roadshow — which is already one of the best in the business.
That was the case for two nights in July 2016 at Yankee Stadium in New York City, where the team was tasked with creating a once in a lifetime concert experience for fans lucky enough to make the show and capturing it for the ages with the best technology available.
While Brooks was on stage each night, behind the scenes was All Mobile Video with “Zurich,” their largest and most powerful HDR and 4K production
truck, supported by a number of other units to record this epic event. The AMV team used a full complement of Sony technology — 22 Sony HDC-4300 cameras, 4 F55 live production systems, BVM-X300 4K OLED reference monitors, an MVS-8000 production switcher and PWS-4500 production servers — all deployed in this landmark production.
For Producer/Director Jon Small, this project was the culmination of over 20 years’ work with Brooks. Known for his video of “Walk this Way” with Aerosmith and Run DMC, his client portfolio is a who’s who in the industry including Reba McEntire, Blake Shelton and Billy Joel. The showcase event he produced for Brooks in the 90’s was shot on film, then the best possible production medium. In the 2000’s, he broke ground with HD video.
These Yankee Stadium shows now further established Sony 4K as the production technology-of-choice for premier events.
“When we started our planning, AMV suggested we consider using their new Sony-powered 4K truck,” said Small. “Garth always looks to the future since it may be as long as five years before the video comes out in some bundled package. It was soon obvious that the investment in Sony 4K was the way to go.”
The choice of Sony 4K cameras was already apparent to Small’s team before he green-lit AMV for 4K. His longtime Technical Supervisor, Kent Green, had just gone through a competitive camera selection process for another 4K project. The HDC-4300s won handily over others in the marketplace.
“The HDC-4300’s are well-designed and have familiar controls,” said Green. “We demo’ed three other brands of 4K cameras and there was no contest. None at all.”
To capture every nuance on the enormous stage for these shows required many more cameras than a typical concert. In addition to the HDC-4300s, Sony F55’s were also in the mix for handheld and Steadicam use. Given that 4K is bandwidth-intensive, the technical infrastructure needed to carry this much data would have to be significant.
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