BBC News Channel: Presentation

I watched the video before I posted my last message. I just don't see how an exceptional circumstance brought on my a minor scheduling error on another channel due to an extraordinary live event in any way justifies a comment like "Jesus! What the hell has happened to BBC News this year?"

You make it sound like there's dead air every hour, or that this is in some other way a regular occurrence, when that's hardly the case at all.

Hence my incredulity at your rather melodramatic comment.

[quote="BBC LDN"][quote="M@"][quote="BBC LDN"]

They do make an overwhelming amount of cock ups and have quite a few more technical hitches than any other newscaster though - you have to be honest.

I do agree though, recently they have been a bit better.

It doesn't. But coupled with all the other errors I've seen, the terrible studio and terrible on-screen graphics (certainly in comparison with how things used to be) I stand by my original comment, which shouldn't be read as a scream or rant, but quietly with a shake of the head. I appreciate that at that specific moment in time, there was nothing they could have done, but I would have thought they'd have planned ahead for things going wrong, or indeed, not have made so many cutbacks in the first place.

As much as I agree with your former comments (not this: "not have made so many cutbacks in the first place" - that's just stupid), I think we've ranted enough about it. Get over it. It's here to stay.

I take it there's been no news on them possibly switching to the night backdrop on the News Channel at 6pm over the winter months, rather than at 10pm?

Since it was the idea of a user on this forum, and (to the best of my knowledge) this isn't an official route for contacting the production team of BBC News, it's very unlikely that a) the producers will know about the issue, or b) they will contact anyone on here to pass on any news.

A momentary 'glitch' with the CSO background for the 8am signer appearing on the NC this morning.

However, I always thought CSO backgrounds had to be of even colour and shade for the best results. The blue curtain behind this guy looks quite unevenly lit and with shadows which might not necessarily key as 'blue', would they?. *looks in noggin's direction for an explanation here*

http://www.rp-network.com/tvforum/uploads/breakfastgnome2.jpg

And how it's supposed to look:

http://www.rp-network.com/tvforum/uploads/breakfastgnome1.jpg

It's not stretched very well, but is clearly good enough as the keying is always acceptable. The lighting's ok. A lot of people think CSO cloths have to be totally flooded with light for the key to work. Actually, it's often the case that you can only add a tiny bit of flood light to balance it out. Over light the cloth and you can end up with a lot of reflected light falling on the shoulders of the presenter, which makes clipping the key virtually impossible (i.e. you get fringing effects around the presenter).

CSO keyers are a lot less picky than they used to be and so long as the cloth isn't overly lit and the presenter is a reasonable distace away from the cloth so that there aren't massive shadows all over the place, it'll key well enough.

A newish technique is to use a retroreflective screen behind the presenter and a ring of high intensity green or blue LEDs around the camera lens. The screen appears to look grey when you look at it, but it's embedded with glass beads which work like cats eyes. Shine a strong light source directly on it, it'll reflect back, so appearing green or blue in the camera. You then light the presenter traditionally.

Quite a good explanation on this site

This technique avoids having to light the cloth at all. A few down-the-line studios in the BBC now use this technique, notably the one at Westminster.

Incidentally, the in-vision signing studio is now at Red Bee Media's Broadcast Centre. I think it used to be in a room next to the dry-cleaners at TV Centre!

While we are on the topic of on screen signing, I thought since moving the One to the control of the News Channel the astons now remain in there position above the ticker and clock rather then shrinking into the screen, so how come it's gone back to the screen?

Interesting that they've gone for special graphics for the pre-budget report, obviously because I guess it'll be seen as a major programme on BBC2 - but why of why could they not make the pre-budget report box line up with the BBC News DOG?

The news channel is currently taking BBC World to cover the Mumbai attacks. Mike Embley and Tim Wilcox presenting.

BBC World News dog now on the News Channel to cover the Mumbai terrorist attacks; Mike Embley and Tim Wilcox presenting from the World studio.

Someone not quite quick enough typing out the astons there: "Karishma Vaswani – Mum" was hastily replaced with ""Karishma Vaswani – Mumbai"