“As a flagship location, the Cannon Street office needed to be a future-focused space,” says Adam Sheldrake, Head of Studios at Fidelity International. “Good communication is essential to our business so we make full use of video media for internal communication, podcasting and participation in finance-related broadcasts.”

He said ATG worked very successfully with them on projects at its previous London headquarters as well as designing and equipping studios at its Hong Kong offices.

“I have always been happy with what they have provided and how they have supported us,” said Sheldrake. “They responded to a proposal based on our initial specification but, because of their experience in past projects for us, were able to suggest a more cost-effective approach which also provided more functionality and included kit of superior specification. The result meets our highest expectations.”

“We have designed, integrated and configured a full TV studio and production control gallery plus a podcast studio with its dedicated control room, edit suites and a green room,” said ATG Danmon Managing Director Russell Peirson-Hagger. “The project also included cabling through from the control areas to a technical apparatus room.”

The main production studio, Studio 1, is equipped with three Blackmagic Ursa UHD cameras and Fujinon lenses. Three of the cameras are mounted on Vinten robotic pedestals. Additional studio facilities include Kino-Flo and Dedolight luminaires, Autoscript on-camera prompting and Sennheiser wireless lavalier microphones. The studio backdrops are from Cirro Lite, mounted on Doughty supports. Audio monitoring is via Genelec powered loudspeakers.

They have also installed a Panasonic UHD camera equipped with remote pan/tilt/zoom control. This can be used to capture wide angle or closeup images from a high, medium or low viewpoint to supplement the main studio cameras. An additional Panasonic camera with remote pan/tilt/zoom control is located in an outdoor housing on the roof to capture views of the City of London, primarily for use as scenery wall displays behind the studio participants.

This level of robotic control allows the production process to be controlled very creatively and efficiently.

At the core of the Studio 1 production control gallery is a Blackmagic Atem UHD switcher with advanced chroma key capabilities that can be used to deliver a wide range of graphic effects. They’ve also integrated titling software that can accept still or moving content in various industry standard file formats. Recording is to a Blackmagic HyperDeck Studio 12G capable of operating at up to 2160p60 UHD resolution over a single cable. This is supplemented by Apple iMac Pro graphics, a Yamaha QL1 audio mixing console and a Custom Consoles main control desk. We also recommended and integrated Custom Consoles MediaWall multiscreen video display mounting grids.

The company also has installed a podcast studio, Studio 2, which is fully equipped with lighting and prompting, plus a Panasonic remote pan/tilt/zoom camera. The podcast control room has similar facilities to the Studio 1 production gallery, including a Blackmagic Atem UHD vision mixer, a HyperDeck Studio 12G recorder, Autoscript prompting and a Custom Consoles control desk.

For the green room, used primarily by guests prior to their studio appearance, they have integrated a 55-inch UHD video display with Genelec loudspeakers and RTS room-to-room audio communications.

Much of the detailed processing equipment is housed in the primary machine room which includes Axon glue, Ross distribution amplifiers, Unifi networking, SNS EVO storage servers, a Quantum tape library with LTO-8 drives, Ross routing and NTP DAD audio interfaces.

“In summary, we have been able to deliver a sensibly costed and versatile production facility of very high quality, complete with staff training and all supporting documentation,” Russell Peirson-Hagger said. “We are confident that this system will have a long working life.”