Cue Lights

Watching a clip on YouTube of an old SwapShop behind the scenes segment, I was interested to see that Noel Edmonds has a button on the desk which flashes a light in the gallery that he can use to indicate to the director that he's about to introduce the next bit of VT/Telecine.



Is that a standard bit of kit in studio productions or something specially provided for Noel to make the thing a bit more spontaneous and perhaps more like his (self-op) radio shows?

I know CBBC continuity used the concept of a "run word" - where the director would ask for a link of an approximate length and agree a word that the presenter would use as the cue to the run the tape.

Probably not so much today with the ease of setup of proper talk-back the presenter can always be cued on time. I've not heard the term "run word" personally, but "out words" are very very common, to denote the last spoken word of a VT so everyone knows when the VT is about to, or has just ended.

The more talented a presenter the better there ability to ad-lib lines and links to specific durations, padding or shortening to get back on time. I've always had great respect for weather presenter/forecasters who often have to change the timings of their reports to get programmes/channels back on time if they're over or under running.

I think run words differed from out words in that they came around 10 seconds before the end of the link to give time for the tape to get up to speed. There's an interview with Sim Courtie on the broomcupboard website where he talks about it.

Of course today clips etc have no pre-roll required thanks to server based playout.

There were a number of things that stood out for me in that video:-

The vision mixer was far more akin to an audio mixer, that each video channel had its own fader.
Today, vision mixers have a fader paddle, that allow fades or wipes between just one source and another.
Though a gallery of that size will today have a mixer with multiple 'ME' banks, (Mix Effect) typically three.
The outputs from each ME can then be mixed together, into the final output.

The wireless mic receivers were just rigged on top of the audio desk, not rack mounted and fed from aerials
in the sudio itself. I can only imagine that was a special arrangement, just for that demo, to ensure robust reception while Noel wandered about the gallery area.

The caption generator area was physically and ergonomically awful, looked like the workbench in my garage !

Everybody in 1981 was terribly polite, it seems a world away now

Very interesting video, thanks for posting it

That style of vision mixer persisted in the pres areas on the 4th and a bit floor for the announcers - felt to be easier to use self op while announcing. Which makes sense, being similar to radio desks routinely used for self op.

BBC LE shows (and I think Thames too ?) in the 70s and early 80s used to do a special mix that
was 'additive', difficult to describe, but the mixer would allow two (or more) sources to cause areas of the combined image to go right up to peak white level and be clipped, rather than a much (some might say) duller conventional effect. Sony mixers had (I don't think it's on the latest models, or maybe it's buried in the menu ?) a button near the paddle to produce the effect, called 'SuperMix'

The mix you're describing is actually called a 'NAM' or 'Non Additive Mix' because you're not linearly mixing between sources. Sounds a bit counter intuitive if you think about it. The one with the highest picture amplitude of the two sources as you perform the mix 'wins'. I understand it was quite popular in monochrome days but went out of fashion somewhat when colour was introduced. Certainly Grass Valley brought it back with their analogue production desks.

The Sony 8000C had a supermix transition. Thames had one. A very, very, very strange effect and not one I could describe in any sense! I think the Japanese must have made it up after a night out on the saki. Never saw the effect on their digital mixers but of course I haven't seen every mixer.

I don't know what make it was, but the BBC had a mixer at their theatre place that could do a lovely mix/wipe - as you performed the transition the picture started to mix and wipe to the second source at the same time. Nice, often used on Val Doonican sort of stuff.

Ha ! I was told by a Japanese design engineer, they put the effect facility on that mixer at the request of, quote, 'some UK broadcasters'

I wonder who they were? I know only of Thames and LNN. I thought Sony only sold 3 in total but perhaps I'm being a bit mean! Nice(ish) mixer but ahead of it's time I think. Was it the DME5000 that 'partnered' it?

Well, the UK product managers (and their counterparts in other countries) would always feed back
to Japan, 'wish lists' of features harvested from broadcasters and facility houses. Yes, I remember
the 8000 switcher (Sony/US speak for vision mixer) Thames bought, I was asked to apply a 'factory recall' style mod to it, before Thames took delivery. You're right, the DME5000 was its sibling. The 8k had a nice solid feel, unlike the 6000 that came after it, that was very 'plasticy'.

Never got involved in that series. The last ones I worked on were the DVS8000G. Nice mixer too.

Couple of issues here.

1. Back in the day VTRs and Telecines (which scanned film live) had to have time to run-up. So you would run them 5, or even 10" before the pictures and sound were stable. That meant you needed to run them 5 or 10" before the presenter stopped talking (or before they hit the script that needed to be covered with VT for a live voice over). For a scripted show this was relatively straightforward, you just back timed the script by 5 or 10" and ran the VT or TK when the presenter hit that bit (if all else fails follow the 3 words per second rule).

For an ad-libbed show you needed a way for the presenter to let you know they were coming to the end of their ad-lib (ideally). You'd see/hear a signal (ear scratch, agreed word, cue light or buzzer from presenter etc.), run the VT or TK, and then the presenter would hear the hard count into the VT/TK item from the PA and stop talking in time.

Imagine directing a busy news opening sequence when each headline VT was run from a -5" pre-roll. That really was a skill. (I've had to do it occasionally)

2. bluecortina - The original quadrant fader mixers (and the BBC split-fader GVG1600s) didn't do a "NAM" they did an "AM". It was an Additive Mix not a Non-Additive Mix. With a NAM you weighted the incoming and outgoing sources inversely by the action of the fader, and the brightest one "won" (effectively it was a kind of burn-through key effect). With an Additive Mix you separately weighted the two sources and added them, no "winning" required (You always got both signals across the picture). The Sony 7000 and 8000 Supermix with the right programming almost allowed you to do the same. Interesting that the new GVG K-Frames, like the 1600s, have the option of the split fader again. (You could split the T-bar into two halves - a left and right, or lock them together to work as normally expected.)

3. Markymark - dead right. It was additive, not non-additive. The NAM was a horrid US effect we seldom used in the UK.