With the cancellation news of summer Love Island due to the pandemic. How could ITV deliver this much-loved hit show to our screens? The pandemic posed as one of the biggest challenges our Industry has faced.

NEP worked in collaboration with ITV / Lifted Entertainment to deliver an unparalleled remote production of a scale, never seen or attempted out of the UK, for a show of this genre and size. Its ground-breaking delivery, technical set up, and outstanding use of remote production delivered a headline show in unprecedented times.

Each Love Island episode turned around seamlessly to air just 30 hours after the action. During production, a staggering 22,272 hours of content was produced. 916 days of endless content edited down to a one-a-day episode transmission. The season culminated in a completely Live-to-Air finale produced in the same remote format from NEP’s new production centre in London.

Jason Spencer led the NEP team with ITV ‘s Head of Technology, to deliver an Industry-first solution unparalleled for the first time in this programme’s history.

ITV announced the hit show would return to our screens for the summer of 2021. With the global pandemic, NEP needed to find a new, cutting-edge solution to capture the drama and love from Love Island fronted by Laura Whitmore, while keeping staff and contestants safe.

Love Island is filmed in a villa, not a TV studio. So, the infrastructure, capture, audio, comms, and connectivity, had to be built from scratch on location. 80 robotically controlled cameras, 10 Studio cameras and 80+ audio sources including contestant microphones were fixed on site. The entire solution was interconnected and networked with fully redundant connectivity provided by NEP, with all feeds routed to London, via NEP’s dual 10gig fibre.

Three engineers and a handful of production operated out of Spain, with the production crew working from NEP’s brand-new production centre in London. All camera pans, tilts, zooms, and creative controls could be managed remotely by crew with zero delay. The show became the first global hit programme of its type to operate on this zero-latency basis. Two substantial remote gallery rooms were designed, to handle live playout or technical control, with 10 edit suites and 16 record streams outfitted for the show.

Between the season debut and finale in August 2021, ITV successfully broadcast 57 episodes of Love Island, including the live finale. Plus, the live episode of the spin off show Love Island: Aftersun straight from the villa – using remote production - an absolute first for large-format reality TV.

NEP with ITV / Lifted Entertainment produced one of the most successful Love Island seasons to date using remote production.

“We have always had a great relationship with NEP. They have always produced the best end-to-end solution for us. This year was no exception. We were up against an extremely tough challenge, and they stepped up, delivering something truly innovative. “ - Steve Kruger