Live X relies on Blackbird to deliver first virtual Democratic National Convention

Posted: 23/09/2020

There are few events more high stakes than a U.S Presidential election. Heading into this fall’s campaign against the backdrop of the pandemic, the Democratic Party turned to a virtual production for its critical national political convention.

For this high-profile, high-pressure job, the Democrat’s communications team selected Live X, a full-service production company based out of New York.  In turn, Live X relied on Blackbird for all cloud video editing and publishing workflows backing the three-day event held in Iowa between 17 – 20 August 2020.

Due to COVID-19, the format was substantially different from previous conventions. The duration of each day was significantly shorter than normal, and most of the convention was held remotely from several venues across the country. Despite being an entirely virtual affair, the video production had to give the best and widest platform possible for the formal unveiling of the party’s nominee for president and vice president, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, respectively. Failure was not an option.

With the eyes of the world watching, up to 60 camera feeds from the venue in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and around the country were switched live by Emmy winning producer and director Glenn Weiss operating from his home.

Live X’s media production team used Blackbird remotely and safely to edit and enrich this content from the convention and publish it ultra-fast to social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. The team further used Blackbird to make content rapidly available to media partners for re-purposing to dozens of digital platforms and channels.

“To make the magic happen we only partner with best-in-class technologies and for true cloud-native video editing, Blackbird is the only show in town. We’re excited to incorporate Blackbird into our tech offering and look forward to Live X and our clients benefitting from the significant productivity efficiencies the platform delivers.”

Corey Behnke, Co-Founder, Live X

Because Blackbird is able to reference media from its current location – whether on-premise or in the cloud – Live X were able to dramatically reduce the need for uploading and downloading large video files. That enabled its remote and distributed team to access live streams within seconds from anywhere, to create clips, sequenced edits, compilations and highlights and to publish that content immediately online and to air.

You can’t argue with the numbers. The GOP lost the TV ratings race, as prime time viewership for the Republican National Convention was consistently below figures for the Democratic party’s virtual convention, according to figures released by Nielsen.

Although President Donald Trump drew an estimated 23.8 million people across 13 different networks for his official acceptance of his party’s nomination for re-election, Joe Biden scored 24.6 million viewers the night he accepted the Democratic nomination.

Far from a one-off project for Live X, the company plans to use Blackbird on an ongoing basis by incorporating Blackbird into its technology stack.