by Amber Maher
In December of 2020, I got the call.
I had just finished working on King Richard as the Video Assist Streaming Engineer. Jeb Johenning from Ocean Video called me up and told me he had recommended me for another streaming video assist position. He had described me as the go-to wizard for anything to do with video assist and streaming media to the team he was working with. He and I had developed a good rapport together while I was working with Dempsey Tillman, Jeff Snyder, and others over at Man in the Box Video Assist. After working on King Richard, WandaVision, and Space Jam: A New Legacy, I had Jeb on speed dial. He was our go-to QTAKE Rep for the West Coast. QTAKE is the gold standard premiere software platform used for Video Assist Operators in Hollywood to record, playback, composite effects, stream, and live view everything that we film.
I’d often call him up to discuss QTAKE jobs. He had helped train most of the video assist people in the union on both coasts, including my mentor, Lee Hopp of LH Video in New York City. I was profoundly flattered by his recommendation and appreciation of my technical know-how but I never expected how that call was about to change my entire world. We discussed my workflows on previous projects like King Richard and Space Jam: A New Legacy, and I told him a little bit about what I’d been dealing with.
COVID-19 changed video assist work on a profound level. No longer could executives and Producers huddle behind a single monitor at video village. On King Richard, I had three Apple TVs that needed to be set up and broken down every day in the trailers. There were about five Executive Producers on iPads that could stream footage from wherever they were working in the world. We had about thirty-five iPads with a local stream for the crew, which I had to charge, disinfect, and maintain every day. Everyone was streaming the live and playback feed from the main QTAKE Pro computer system. Getting all these systems to work seamlessly required a lot of trial and error but we pulled it off and it was a big hit. However, if one screen ever went black, I’d get a text from almost every Executive Producer asking why they can’t see picture. From that experience and from working with the beta test version of the QTAKE Pro Stream on Space Jam: A New Legacy, I had added some new tricks to my bag to get it all to work.
Jeb was impressed with what he heard and began to tell me a little bit more about the show he wanted to put me on. I was told I’d have basics like my cart, cables, gear, etc., and that I’d be moving around different stages and locations. Everything would need to be streamed live. Production required a very complex workflow. The scope of it was almost overwhelming. He said that there would be between one hundred and one hundred fifty clients on the stream, including the executive team and those working remotely in Canada. We would be on six to eight different stages in addition to doing on-location work in downtown LA. The art department, production department, and all of the regular on-set crew would be utilizing the stream and would need service. COVID Zones A, B, and C would all need to be set up for streaming. New Directors would be coming in every other block and would need to be set up, along with their assistants. After doing the math, I realized this would be about ten times more clients than we had on King Richard or any other film I had worked on. And just one video assist person? It was massive! What show was going to need so many people? I had a lot of ideas of how this all could work. Every scenario was rather a tantalizing puzzle to solve. So I asked Jeb, “Well … when do I start?”
It wasn’t until later that I learned that the show in question was Star Trek: Picard and that we would be shooting show’s second and third seasons back-to-back. This was a dream come true. I grew up watching Star Trek with my dad. Having very keen knowledge of the show, characters, and episodes, I realized that this was monumental and could showcase all the new technologies that Video Assist Engineers could utilize.
Star Trek: Picard had a very strict COVID protocols, as most of the cast was over the age of fifty. The Producers were thorough and safety was their prime concern on the set. We had very limited crew allowed to be on set, as well as in Zone A. Everything that production had gotten familiar with over the past fifty years was thrown out the window. It was an odd experience, filming a science fiction story whilst seemingly living in one as well. COVID made its presence known on the set. One day, a co-worker would be gone and someone would inform us that they were working from home in quarantine. At the height of January’s COVID surge, we never knew who would show up to work each day.
Therefore, everyone had to be able to utilize the QTAKE. It became a vital tool for production. In fact, the production became so reliant on it that our Showrunner personally thanked me and told me they couldn’t have done it without my workflow. If video assist went down, we all went down. Jeb and I spoke about how this show, and this role could really set a precedent for video assist. This was the moment that I could get every Producer, Director, crew member, and the staff on our show to see and experience video assist and the stream like never before. Video assist would become the eyes and ears of production. There’s no other way to describe it. So we had to start from scratch and created it on the Star Trek: Picard set.
It was exciting to figure out all the possibilities. I got to work on the design and infrastructure of it. I ended up making a lot of flow charts and maps. On a show this large, it would have been impossible to wing it. I needed a complete plan in place. Maybe two or three of them. Thankfully, I was working with Todd Marks of Images on Screen, who was the Video Department Head on Picard. He was a veteran Video Playback Engineer and he spoke to production about getting me the essential prep time needed to create an ideal scene to stream for this show. He and his team of Video Engineers were able to understand the more technical aspects of our craft and vouch for it if something was needed. I was not alone and knew I had the backup of a full team of tech wizards at the helm of the show. Having such a large amount of Local 695 representation on set was wonderful. If I was getting a hard no from production and really needed the help, I was no longer a one-person band raising my hand.
For studio work, I decided to create a local QTAKE network for streaming by utilizing the stage’s IT department. I needed a bandwidth of 50mbps up and down on every stage. Then I created a secondary network for all the production offices, the art department, and to communicate with the other stages. Each remote stage required its own VPN (virtual private network) so that we could all be on one network that pointed to my system. The Ruckus (my Wi-Fi access point) beams a signal in a radius of about 100-150 feet, so I needed to set up several of them to boost the signal each time we were shooting. By setting it up this way, everyone on the QTAKE network could stream locally while everyone working remotely could stream from the cloud. This allowed the studio’s network to power the bulk of the Wi-Fi without having to rely on my individual Wi-Fi access point to supply the stream to the entire team. So in essence, a Producer or crew member could walk from one stage to another stage, into the office, out into the art department, through the production offices, and still be connected to the stream all using the QTAKE network I set up. This allowed for more crew to be able to be farther away from set and not have to rely on their cellphone signals (there was barely any service on our sets) to stream.
The minute I tapped into the Ethernet plug in the wall and my system was up and running, we could all be streaming. Once we were, I found it worked better than anyone could of imagined. At one point, we had two teams and six cameras on the stream. The team could open up an iPad and see everything being shot at one time. It was actually quite fun to see the look on a Director or Producer’s face when they realized what they had available at the tips of their fingers. They were thrilled that there was one place they could go to see everything happening at once.
Anecdotally, the team got so used to seeing things in real time that whenever cameras were turned off and the signal broke, I’d be inundated with texts asking what was wrong. On one occasion, a battery swap resulted in more than a hundred texts from staff and crew who thought they’d lost the stream. To solve this, I created a handy Star Trek-inspired graphic that read, “Please Standby for Assimilation” so that Producers would know they weren’t missing any of the action. This was appreciated, especially by my fellow Trekkies on the team.
On location shooting proved much more challenging, especially on the day I found out that we would be set up on an insert car. The Director, DP, DIT, camera crew, and I were to follow the action and I had to stream it back to the production team while going 45 mph. There had been some debate as to whether or not I’d be joining them but a word from the Executive Producers settled the matter. They’d grown so accustomed to being able to watch every frame in real time that they weren’t going to let a little thing like high speed vehicle logistics deprive them of that luxury. I’ll never forget the moment when the DP pulled out his phone, read a text from our Showrunner, and asked, “How can they even see what we’re shooting?!” Then he looked at me.
I was fortunate in being able to take advantage of Local 695’s Y-16A Trainee Program. Early on in production, a member of the COVID compliance team approached me and said, “Hi, my name is Vadym. Can I ask what you’re doing on set?” I soon learned that Vadym Medvediuk was a political asylum recipient from the Ukraine and that he was interested in finding his craft on the set. With a little work, he became a part of the Local’s program and became my trainee on the set. He was fascinated by the video assist system and was eager to help me in whatever way he could, so I decided to train him. Like my previous trainee (Antonio Rodriguez), Vadym was a hard worker and did his best to learn all the ins and outs of the video assist role. In many ways, this was the perfect show as it threw him right into the deep end right out of the gate. By the end of the show’s run, I could entrust him to set up one stage while I worked on another and even run the second unit video assist while I pulled his signal and fed it to the Producers alongside my own. This resulted in a seamless integration where the production team could simultaneously watch both units work on a single screen. Now, after completing his stint on Star Trek, Vadym is in the process of becoming a Y-7 Engineer and has already begun doing video assist work of his own.
I must say that in my dealing with this show, the support that I received from the Producers, the crew, and everyone involved was like nothing I had ever encountered working in the business before. The Star Trek family really was just that: a family. It was wonderful and it is and was one of the best and most professional crews in Hollywood. From the Executive Producers, Producers, Directors, DP’s, and the legendary cast, it was such an honor and privilege to give my all to these two seasons on this remarkable show. Creatively, it was a treasure trove to walk into the Star Trek universe and know that from my job, I was able to create an impact on one of the most beloved shows this world has seen. The cast was stellar and there were so many laughs. Forever friendships were created, tears were shed, and love could be found all around. Thank you everyone involved for trusting me and choosing me to do this job. We really did become family on this set during a very unique time in history. We created some amazing storytelling, filmmaking at its best, and I can’t wait to carry that future on other projects too.