How To Live Stream From A Roller Coaster 150 Feet Off the Ground At 57 MPH
Live Stream From A Roller Coaster?
“What about live streaming?” I said. Sean wasn’t sure what I meant. “Live stream the opening speeches during the event? We can easily do that.” he said. “No, live stream from the actual roller coaster train.” I replied. There was silence on the other end of the phone. A few weeks later, thanks to the help of over a dozen talented people, we were live streaming to multiple news broadcasts from the new HangTime roller coaster at Knott’s Berry Farm. Here’s how we did it:
During my four years at Knott’s Berry Farm, I have worked together with Sean Teegarden and his production team on dozens of photo and video shoots. From rides to water slides to food, we have captured the charm of Knott’s Berry Farm, but we had never live streamed from a coaster before. My main motivation for live streaming was to be more efficient during the hectic media events that would accompany the HangTime roller coaster opening. Our previous setups involved awkwardly swapping the SD cards out of the cameras (Usually GoPros) throughout the media events and sending over only the basic reverse point-of-view videos. That process was slow, clunky and often error-prone. We knew there had to be a better way.
The first challenge was mounting a camera on HangTime. Instead of opting for a small GoPro, Sean recommended using the much larger Panasonic GH5. The quality of the image from the GH5 is much better than the GoPro, especially in low-light night situations, and has removable lenses. The camera was the perfect choice to capture HangTime’s incredible LED lighting package. The next step for the live stream was figuring out how to mount the camera, batteries, microphone and wireless transmitter onto the coaster train.
