Sky – Academy Awards

The Project:

The 93rd Annual Academy Awards ceremony was, as always, a hot topic in mainstream media and across social. Sky Cinema broadcast four hours of a  live action-packed show, using our cloud-based audience engagement platform to feature live reactions from the audience on Twitter and redisplay with stunning graphics.

The Challenge:

At an intimate, yet, most notably in-person event, broadcast live from Union Station, Los Angeles, Sky was eager to feature viewers’ reactions shared on Twitter, to create a more immersive experience. Producers needed to rapidly search through thousands of tweets and moderate relevant content, something that would have been done manually and cut and pasted into the show – an arduous and slow task for a live production.

How we did it:

Used by Sky for several projects across their portfolio, producers were confident that Dizplai would deliver a seamless experience for both the users, and the viewers. In the build up to the show, our support team worked with a new user to demonstrate the social moderation features and  prepare them for the upcoming show.

As a cloud-based platform, Dizplai was integrated into Sky’s distributed workflow, and accessed through a web browser. Throughout the show, presenters called for viewers to engage via social media, commenting, “you are very much part of Oscar night, so if you want to get involved then use #Oscars @SkyTV and #SkyCinema!”. Sky’s @SkyTV Twitter profile interacted with viewers and also shared the latest award’s results, featuring the likes of Anthony Hopkins for Best Actor and Chloé Zhao for Nomadland.

The Results

Producers used the social moderation tools to search Twitter using the relevant hashtags, and feature the audience’s generated content in real-time. Overall, the Oscars were viewed by over 23 million people, and the hashtag #Oscars was the top trend in multiple regions on Twitter. A hugely successful night for all involved, and certainly a night to remember for the newly crowned Academy Award winners. Dizplai’s best in class tool set will be used again for more upcoming Sky projects – watch this space for more details.