My experience with directing live productions isn’t exhaustive, but I enjoy doing it whenever I get a chance. From high school in 2004 all the way through working on Coachella’s livestream this summer, the workflow has always been very similar: a director with a big bank of screens & buttons guides a crew of camera operators and picks his or her favorite shots out of the bunch. For as long as I can remember, these shoots have been very expensive and have demanded a lot of gear.

My first “portable” multicam switcher in high school. Housed in two road cases, It connected to three cameras.

A month ago, I was contacted by my friends at Jukebox the Ghost. They were looking for a live streaming solution for their upcoming halloween shows. I gave them quotes for a full-fledged live show ($20,000+), and a laptop with a built-in camera running a YouTube feed ($0). Neither of these options worked for anybody. We needed good sound and at least a couple camera options to keep the feed engaging. After a rejection of the $20,000 option, I came across a solution that wouldn’t break the bank.

Switcher Studio Pro is a live production switcher and recorder for iOS. The software’s killer feature is the way it can painlessly add and remove iPhones and iPads as cameras. All that’s needed is a shared wifi network and a free software download on each camera. This is a huge gamechanger. iPhones & iPod Touches are small, and there are plenty of mounting options on the market to accommodate them. Unlike a setup with broadcast cameras, the show doesn’t require a full crew of people to run cables and keep them safe from dancing crowds. With these advantages over, it seemed as if Switcher Studio Pro had arrived to make this production possible.

A very small, very manageable production switcher in the professional broadcast world. This is what I was working on the week before “Halloqueen”. I still love me some light-up buttons.

On the software side, SSP is young but still very powerful. It easily handles streaming into a wide swath of services and is capable of recording its program output. Up to four live sources appear in the bottom left corner of the director’s device, with a preview monitor, program monitor occupying the top half of the screen. The remaining quadrant gives the director access to camera settings, stream settings, transitions and audio meters. Unlike a traditional control room, Switcher Studio is difficult to break. Tap to preview camera, tap again to make it live, repeat. I felt very at home when it came to switching cameras—I just needed a reliable way to get those iOS sources rolling.

Hardware