The Newsroom

General Presentation/Logistics Questions

Who? How? Why? (March 2011)

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GS
Gavin Scott Founding member
BBC WORLD posted:
You've been in the same room as Sue Lawley? In the presence of greatness! What did she say tp you and did you beat up the rogues in the gallery who disagreed with Sue's suggestion to the floor manager? Was she on with Witchell?

I assume scripts were always printed on bright yellow paper to avoid glare under the lights?

"The Six Oclock News, from the BBC. With Sue Lawley and Gavin Scott."


Ha ha!

Definitely Sue, but it might have been Andrew whatsisname with her. I think I spoke to her in the newsroom beforehand - but everyone was thoroughly lovely as I recall.

In the picture back a page, above the blue cyc cloth was an "observation gallery" - separate from the directors control room. It was me and a bunch of (I assume) media studies types, who chattered incessantly and didn't pay attention to anything. Fools.

By 9pm Peter Dorling had left the building, and left me in the hands of a lovely assistant, who let me sit in the actual gallery for the 9 o'clock with Julia Somerville (or was that Debbie Thrower?), and I sat at the back next to the robot camera operator, watching pages being flung around as they changed the running order. Right up to the wire there was a report they were trying to pull together, and with about a minute to go they dumped it (scripts flying), recapped s-l-o-w-l-y on the headlines and ended the broadcast.

Between 6 and 9 I was also allowed into another studio while Peter Simon was taping Run the Risk, with thousands of unruly kids in the audience.

What a brilliant day that was!
MI
m_in_m
Gavin Scott posted:

Definitely Sue, but it might have been Andrew whatsisname with her. I think I spoke to her in the newsroom beforehand - but everyone was thoroughly lovely as I recall.

Andrew Harvey?
GS
Gavin Scott Founding member
m_in_m posted:
Gavin Scott posted:

Definitely Sue, but it might have been Andrew whatsisname with her. I think I spoke to her in the newsroom beforehand - but everyone was thoroughly lovely as I recall.

Andrew Harvey?


That's the sausage.
NG
noggin Founding member
BBC WORLD posted:

I assume scripts were always printed on bright yellow paper to avoid glare under the lights?


Yep - though more of an issue with pre-90s, tubed, cameras. Tubed cameras could be 'sticky' meaning highlights temporarily marked the camera tubes, leaving a mark or shadow on bright bits. White paper is the brightest, most reflective paper and wasn't good on-camera as it bleached out and could cause cameras to 'stick'.

With CCD cameras this isn't an issue, as they don't 'stick', though bright bits can still be a bit distracting.

Many studios use pale yellow or pale blue paper (though theatrical tradition mean few use green)
IT
itsrobert Founding member
On the subject of yellow scripts, I recall seeing a clip of the ITN News at 5:45 from the 80s where the said yellow paper caused the presenter to become 'see-through'. I think they must have used yellow as the CSO colour (the bulletins always ended with a side shot of the presenter, showing the real background to be yellow - possibly a curtain?) and as such, if the presenter held up the script too far it took on the CSO background image! I would have thought they'd have used a different colour paper in those circumstances!
DE
deejay
Yes, it's a general misconception that CSO / Chromakey has to be done over blue or green cloths. It can in fact be done over any colour - it's simply a replacement of a given colour with another video source. Blue was chosen by the BBC because there's generally very little blue in skintone. Green seems to be much more common these days however, but I have found that yellow scripts can appear fuzzy (even completely see-through) when keying against green. Green can also cause problems with presenters with blonde hair.

I think I read somewhere (recently) that the Tardis was keyed over red ...
GS
Gavin Scott Founding member
deejay posted:
I think I read somewhere (recently) that the Tardis was keyed over red ...


Model shots for some parts of Star Wars and Star Trek were shot against red screen - also blue, depending on the colour properties of some of the models being used.
JW
JamesWorldNews
On a day like yesterday, with many road closures etc, how would BBC News have managed to get Nicholas Witchell from Westminster Abbey to Buckingham Palace for a live interview with Mishal Husain, just shortly after the ceremony ended? One would imagine that it took quite a while to empty the Abbey, after all the dignitaries had left. Would they have whizzed him down a secret route on a motorbike, in his tux, or would he have taken the tube, or how exactly? Genuine question, by the way.

Sound question again: given the very loud background noise from the crowd yesterday, how does the anchor out on the street manage to hear the gallery, without having the sound turned up so much that it is audible and picked up by his mic?
DE
deejay
BBC WORLD posted:
On a day like yesterday, with many road closures etc, how would BBC News have managed to get Nicholas Witchell from Westminster Abbey to Buckingham Palace for a live interview with Mishal Husain, just shortly after the ceremony ended? One would imagine that it took quite a while to empty the Abbey, after all the dignitaries had left. Would they have whizzed him down a secret route on a motorbike, in his tux, or would he have taken the tube, or how exactly? Genuine question, by the way.

Sound question again: given the very loud background noise from the crowd yesterday, how does the anchor out on the street manage to hear the gallery, without having the sound turned up so much that it is audible and picked up by his mic?


Earpieces (should) fit solidly into the ear - they are moulded to fit exactly. However in large noisy crowd situations it can still be hard to hear your cue, so presenters rely on floor managers even more, who often wear noise-cancelling headsets so they can hear the talkback and the cue completely. When the presenter is asking a question, the director will pass on the question to the Floor Manager, who passes it on to the location presenter. So long as that questions doesn't change (!), even if the location presenter can't hear the question properly they can at least respond when cued by their floor manager with the right answer!

As for getting reporters from location to location, yes there will have been a way for them to get from a to b. Either simply by working through the crowd, or by some using backstreets. I doubt they'll have used motorbikes, but you never know. I wouldn't have thought he'd have used the tube. The nearest tube station to the palace is Green Park, which isn't actually that close and I think a lot of Green Park was closed off as it was where the broadcasting centre was built. It's not that far from Westminster to the Palace.
NG
noggin Founding member
deejay posted:
Yes, it's a general misconception that CSO / Chromakey has to be done over blue or green cloths. It can in fact be done over any colour - it's simply a replacement of a given colour with another video source. Blue was chosen by the BBC because there's generally very little blue in skintone. Green seems to be much more common these days however, but I have found that yellow scripts can appear fuzzy (even completely see-through) when keying against green. Green can also cause problems with presenters with blonde hair.

I think I read somewhere (recently) that the Tardis was keyed over red ...


Green is often preferred if you're keying in a YCrCb based system (like 4:2:2 studio set-ups or 3:1:1 HD Cam or 4:1:1 DVC Pro HD) because more green detail is carried in the high-bandwith (and higher resolution) luminance channel, than red or blue (more of which is carried in the low bandwith colour-difference channels running at half, third or quarter luminance res), so you can often get a better quality key from green in 4:2:2 systems than from red, and blue is the trickiest (as it contributes a maximum of ~0.11xB to the luminance in ITO 601 SD and ~0.08xB in ITU 709 HD)

If you have a 4:4:4 system (or back in the days when you have RGB analogue signals separately feeding the chroma keyer in an otherwise composite mixer) then this isn't the case.

Magenta is often used to chroma key from graphic sources that don't have key channels (particularly weather maps - which have lots of blue and green in them).
CB
computer bloke
BBC WORLD posted:
Not working in the tv or media industries, I often wonder how certain things are done. As these questions are possibly common to more than one news organization's output, I thought to post in a separate thread, as opposed to getting lost in one of the current mega-threads. Please forgive me if some of these questions are naff.


What happens when the link to the presenter's earpiece fails and he can't hear the gallery any more? How does the gallery get their instructions across? Is there a back-up method of flashing big messages across autocue???

People like John Simpson and Adam Boulton are known as Editors. Does this mean that they are actually responsible for editing the content of reporter's work? Are they editors in the true sense? If not, why are they called editors?

What are the reporting structures? eg Simpson is the World Affairs Editor. Does that mean that he's Mike Wooldridge's boss (Mike is World Affairs Correspondent)? Or are these titles just all grandiose or for public consumption?

"Animate Charisma"! Remember that from the BBC News in the late 80's eras. What was charisma again?

Do foreign news correspondents on assignment always stay in big fancy hotels when reporting from a capital city?

Obviously it depends on size, but what is the average hourly cost of the live running of a news studio? (Let's say News 24 for example). All-in per hour??

How long does it take to devise and implement a new "look" for a channel? For example, we discussed the fact that the BBC's David Lowe "era" commenced in May 1999. To achieve that deadline on-air, did the BBC start to float enquiries one year in advance? Two years in advance? Six months?

I guess it's just like any business, really. All takes time to do.




If the earpiece fails, there is still the floor manager who can relay information to the presenter. Some presenters like to listen to the gallery on open gallery talkback (which is live all the time), and some like to listen only to switched talkback (only live when someone in the gallery wants to talk to the presenter). Usually the floor manager counts the presenter in/out anyway, regardless of whether the presenter can hear the NTA (Network transmission assistant - who times everything) or not.

Certainly in the BBC, the word 'Editor' can be applied to any number of roles, some of which may be editorial (in the news sence) or not. A bit like the word 'officer' in the police.

Questech (think thats spelled correctly) Charisma was a multi channel real time digital video effects generator. I first saw one demonstrated in 1990, and BBC Newcastle were one of the first stations to get one. Quite old now.

The cost of running a TV studio is variable and depends what you take into account. Staff wages?, depreciation of kit?, electricity bill?. Admin cost?. A regional studio back in 1995 cost, I think, arround £4.5k an hour in total.

Can't comment on the 'new look'
CB
computer bloke
noggin posted:
deejay posted:
Yes, it's a general misconception that CSO / Chromakey has to be done over blue or green cloths. It can in fact be done over any colour - it's simply a replacement of a given colour with another video source. Blue was chosen by the BBC because there's generally very little blue in skintone. Green seems to be much more common these days however, but I have found that yellow scripts can appear fuzzy (even completely see-through) when keying against green. Green can also cause problems with presenters with blonde hair.

I think I read somewhere (recently) that the Tardis was keyed over red ...


Green is often preferred if you're keying in a YCrCb based system (like 4:2:2 studio set-ups or 3:1:1 HD Cam or 4:1:1 DVC Pro HD) because more green detail is carried in the high-bandwith (and higher resolution) luminance channel, than red or blue (more of which is carried in the low bandwith colour-difference channels running at half, third or quarter luminance res), so you can often get a better quality key from green in 4:2:2 systems than from red, and blue is the trickiest (as it contributes a maximum of ~0.11xB to the luminance in ITO 601 SD and ~0.08xB in ITU 709 HD)

If you have a 4:4:4 system (or back in the days when you have RGB analogue signals separately feeding the chroma keyer in an otherwise composite mixer) then this isn't the case.

Magenta is often used to chroma key from graphic sources that don't have key channels (particularly weather maps - which have lots of blue and green in them).


The quality of keying these days is much better than it used to be, and I've even keyed a graphic using infra red on a ballatino cloth. (I did have to remove the IR filter element from the Ikegami camera to do it, and replace it with an equivalent thickness neutral filter to maintain the focal length). Useful as the guest didn't get a ring of bright LED's in his eyes, but not so good as the extra IR causes mild blurring.
The SDI keyers can sample the actual colour to be keyed (often not pure due partly to the camera colour matrix, LED frequency, or purity of the dyes in the cloth) and many keyers offer 2 stages of keying (the GVG Zodiak does this) as well as hue suppresion (which doesn't seem to be used much in some areas!).

Never seen Magenta used to be honest. Curious! Smile

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