This year, we had the honor of producing the official YouTube live stream for the 2026 graduation ceremony at Palisades Charter High School — held right on their stadium field, streamed live to the school's own channel for families and friends who couldn't be there in person.
The full production took about 10 hours from start to finish, covering setup, the live broadcast itself, and strike.
The Setup
We ran five camera positions in total:
- Three stationary cameras on Sony FX6 bodies — one centered, two flanking the sides — fitted with 70-200mm and 200-600mm lenses to cover everything from wide ceremony shots to tight close-ups on stage.
- One free-roaming camera on a Sony FX3 with a 24-70mm lens, mounted on a stabilizer and paired with a wireless transmitter to send its feed back to our switcher in real time.
- One wide camera positioned behind the stage, capturing the full graduating class — and perfectly timed to catch the cap toss at the end of the ceremony.
All four core feeds were routed into a Blackmagic video switcher, along with audio pulled directly from the venue's sound board. From there, the entire program — video and audio — was sent live to YouTube on the school's official account.
"Moving through the crowd, the free camera picked up the moments a fixed camera never could — the reactions, the hugs, the nervous excitement right before names were called."
That candid, emotional coverage ended up being one of the highlights of the day — it gave the broadcast a warmth that pure ceremony coverage often misses.
Why It Worked
Productions like this come down to signal reliability and coverage planning. With five feeds converging into one switcher and going live in real time, there's no room for guesswork — every camera position, lens choice, and transmission path has to be planned before the first person walks in.
Take a look at the full broadcast and the recap below.
