From a Facebook post by Janis Friedlander Svendsen, afficanced to director Glenn Weiss:
This is my fiancé and I could not be prouder of this man than I am at this historic moment in time. He has been on endless Zoom calls for months working on production aspects and directing the Democratic National Convention. Throughout these past few months, the pandemic has had the production team pivoting on a daily basis. First Glenn was going to Milwaukee, then Delaware and in the end and since there were so many LIVE remotes anyway, he had an entire control room set up in the house.
I have had the privilege to watch Glenn (from our Family Room) plan out and bring in all the technology to direct 58 cameras from around the country, deal with dozens of speakers and talent, and hundreds of folks on the production team. Watching the process of Glenn and his partner, Ricky Kirshner work with the leadership of the DNC and Biden campaign to make this all happen has been astonishing. The level of detail has been extraordinary. We even have a generator in our backyard as the heatwave has caused blackouts in our area.
I have played the role of Craft Services, “Truck PA”, and more. Glenn at the helm is steady, creative, calm, funny, polite, and decisive. I know I am biased, but Glenn’s talent and experience were exactly what this unconventional convention needed. As a proud Democrat and American citizen (and loving partner), I am so grateful we had Glenn’s leadership and instincts helping to make this coming together of our party so successful and meaningful… — with Glenn Weiss in Brentwood
My take: I love seeing what’s going on behind the screen.
See also: Shot on iPhone: The raucous fringes of RNC 2016 (video)
I would guess this director would have a VERY robust internet connection installed at his home (200 mbs to probably full gigabit speeds) plus computer and switching systems to manage and direct the camera feeds he is receiving. He may even have multiple phone and VOIP or wireless phone lines to facilitate communications or as backup.
As for whether he should be in a studio or corporate office, it really isn’t much different, plus he’d be nearly by himself, and few creature comforts plus having to put the same setup together. And who knows how good a backup power system he’d have there. Sometimes you just have to trust the people you employ to get the job done.
I’m aware that Internet signals generally go over a different set of cables than power. That means that there are two independent failure points either of which would be sufficient for an outage. Btw, a tree branch falling on an internet cable takes it out regardless of how robust the signal is. The internet signal can also fail if the power goes out to the router that connects the neighborhood cabling to the backbone.
All I’m saying is that the distribution network, both power and internet, is much more robust at a commercial facility than at a residential location.
As is the person, usage of the MBAir, and mad skills all around.
Not seeing the rest of the room, I’m assuming there is heavy use of cloud computing for the streams? Not knowledgeable at all in this field.
I concur. I’d only add, thank you Apple!