Sky News Thread - Relaunch on Monday

CLEO = Curvi-Linear Effects Option. It was an option on the Questech Charisma that allowed you to bend and wrap the picture (page turn, wrap onto a sphere etc.) like Mirage, rather than treating the video source as a flat sheet. It wasn't a separate product - just a Charisma option. The BBC use(d) Charisma in most of their galleries and OB units - in fact I suspect at one point News 24 and BBC World were the only galleries that had DVEs that weren't Charismas.

CLEO appeared in the very early 90s - there was even a Commodore Amiga software package that let you design your own 3D effects - though CLEO was perfectly usable without it. (The Clothes Show and Top of the Pops were both using it for some completely over the top effects at one point in the early 90s!) AIUI there are no working CLEO Amigas left at TVC - the Charismas are just used as shot box and "Flat" DVEs these days.

Charisma was more a range of devices rather than a single one - and it was radically re-engineered in the 90s - but sadly now that Questech are no more - the Charisma's are slowly being retired. I think the company suffered by putting all of its eggs pretty much in one basket (DVEs) They did produce other devices - like a solid state video delay device (the SSVR) - but these were niche devices, and quickly overtaken by technology (such as the widespread uptake of Hard Disc servers)

That's a shame about CLEO because it did produce some nifty effects. The differences were noticeable between it and what they used on Saturday/Friday Night Live and The Tube. Very interesting stuff!

S/FNL used Mirage, not sure about the Tube. Mirage was capable of better quality and more sophisticated transitions than Charisma CLEO. (The video processing and internal keying in Mirage was better, and in the final Mirages there was even some very clever light-source shading with the Starlight option. CLEO was never very good at lighting and shadows. CLEO was really crude in how it did some of its curvy stuff. You wouldn't notice it on a fast transition - but if you were doing other stuff you'd see the rough edges and curves made up of straight edges. Mirage was often used instead of CGI for some stuff - like 3D modelling - it was so good)

However CLEO was much easier to program - you used an Amiga with a graphical interface, rather than an HP minicomputer with PASCAL computer code which was required for advanced Mirage work I believe. It was also smaller and cheaper, and more easy to integrate into a multi-channel version. The BBC bought loads of Charismas and CLEOs for their galleries and some edit suites - I don't think they ever owned a Mirage (they rented in)

The Mirage used for Saturday Night Live wasn't even in LWTs studios - it was in a facilities house in Covent Garden apparently. They had circuits to and from the facilities house to do the live transitions remotely...

Not to mention The Day Today.

Some wonderful examples on there.

Yes I remember people working in television news actually looked on rather enviously at some of the graphics used on The Day Today. I think they used to do the graphics on news programmes but made the graphics very over the top and 'in your face!' I beleive they won a BAFTA for it too.

Those graphics were created 'out of hours' at ITN by Russell and Richard.

Soon after they left, and set up the very sucessful company 'Jump', who have created the titles for The Weakest Link and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire amoungst many, many other shows.

Looks like Sky have managed to acquire another up and coming reporter/presenter from the BBC. Sumit Bose - who was a reporter for BBC London's Inside Out and 60 Seconds on BBC Three, was reporting on Sky News this afternoon. I wonder if there will be any more signings from Sky before the relaunch after Ginny Buckley and Anna Jones.

SO who will replace summit on BBC3? My money is on Emily Maitlis.

I don't think that he had presented 60 Seconds for a good while (probably over a year). Recently, it has been presented by Sevi Lawson or James Dagwell.

i think you have to ASIAN to present 60 seconds

I think you have to go away very quickly and very quietly, before you get rounded on by the entire forum.

I imagine there are still a fair few announcements to come out of Sky News. I don't expect we've heard even half of the proposed scheduling.

8pm-midnight still has to be filled up with 'feature/personality' shows. I really cannot see them sticking with rolling news during those hours. Their ad agency will presumably start putting out some of their stuff within the next few weeks, as there's only about a month or so before launch (assuming early Sept.)

Just seen Richard Henwood on Sky News just a moment ago, he must be fairly new to Sky? Doesn't seem long ago I saw him on Anglia News...

http://www.leeseaman.com/stuff/tvforum/skynews/richardhenwood.jpg