Emmy Awards bosses have admitted the upcoming ceremony is a "logistic nightmare" because it will involve so many video links from people's homes.
Emmy Awards bosses have admitted the upcoming ceremony is a "logistic nightmare".
The annual event will take place virtually on Sunday, with 130 stars being sent fully-assembled broadcasting units featuring a camera, laptop, ring light and boom mic, so they can connect up via video link for the nominations and acceptance speeches, and producers have admitted there's a huge possibility that things could go badly wrong.
Explaining Los Angeles' Staples Center, where the ceremony will broadcast from, was the only facility that could handle so many incoming signals, executive producer Ian Stewart joked: "You have so many things coming in and also so many things that can stop coming in.
"Trying to get to the middle of nowhere to get one of [the camera units] installed in somebody's house and to get it up and running - and, of course, under all of the precautions that we obviously are taking - is a logistic nightmare. How could it possibly go wrong?"
And while fellow executive producer Reginald Hudlin thinks the video links will offer a more relaxed and authentic feel to the ceremony, he thinks the possibility of chaos will add to the fun and admitted they aren't entirely sure how well things will work.
He said during a virtual press conference: "We're essentially making things up as we go along.
"I know that's not the most reassuring answer, but it's kind of the truth! We've never done this before."
Host Jimmy Kimmel will be joined at the Staples Center by around a dozen famous faces for various sketches because bosses didn't want to go down the "easy route" of pre-recording most of the segments.
Ian said: "We decided let's not do the easy route here and the sanitized route here and do lots of pre-recorded things and put them all together and bolt them back to back and put out something that's sort of generic.
"We're in this time ― a stumbling block can be a steppingstone depending on how you use it.
"This is a time to be a bit loose and to have a lot more fun, so live, live, live, live, live, live, live, whenever we can do live.
"And things like a nomination package is pretty hard to do live, but anything that we can do live, we will do live."