What a proud moment it's been for the team at oXyFire Media to be nominated for the prestigious Royal Television Society Midlands Awards in Factual and Specialist Factual for Ghost in the Ruins.
Ghosts in the Ruins is a co-production between Coventry City of Culture Trust and Coventry Cathedral. A site-specific performance created by artist Nitin Sawhney as a response to the 60th anniversary of Benjamin Britten’s ‘War Requiem’, Originally composed for the opening of the new Coventry Cathedral in 1962.
The performance followed two linked parts - the first being seated inside the modern Cathedral, with a focus on intimate and reflective choral moments, including singers and musicians rising from and moving around the audience, interspersed with sections of ambient music and sound. The performance then moved into the ruins of the Cathedral to experience a bold, performative ending, where the Cathedral singers were joined by community singers from in and around Coventry.
Alongside the choral and musical elements there will be a series of specially-commissioned visual images that were projected onto the walls of the interior of the Cathedral. These created a sense of journey for the audience. Working with artist Mark Murphy, we developed a workflow to capture the six 7m x 25m projection columns as well as the beautiful soundscapes.
Our TV team of 29 amazingly talented colleagues over 6 onsite days, 12 cameras, 62 km of fibre core and cable, 9 outside broadcast vehicles, 2 jobs, 20 channels of record and we shot over 30 TB of data. It was probably one of the most technically complex events and broadcasts we worked on. Our proudest achievement is the project was entirely produced in the regions.