Studio Sets, Infrastructure and General Technical

I recall a Zamboni-type machine driving over to wash Off the Television Centre floor paint in the BP studio as part of the report.

I remember something similar from a Live & Kicking report on their set being dismantled at the end of the show.

The graphics for the show are powered by Ventuz - which is windows only. Kind of like Viz, but more general purpose than broadcast. It pulls everything in from databases and generates the graphics, column and scores as needed.

Was it this?

Good video that, shows why we need a television centre

A studio/theatre set always looks magical when lit and a bit when not

Am I right in thinking that the early series of Pointless had their scoring systems credited to Cat and Mouse? (They put together a rather good Skype for broadcast solution, and ended up being bought by Microsoft.)

That’s exactly it, and it’s literally a Zamboni with the blades underneath. Cheers!

That’s not the one that I described, this on is a few years earlier but it’s been a fascinating watch.

Blue Peter have done a few of these over the years it seems, including this one that focusses more on the technical side of setting up TVC One back in 1991.

There’s also a full behind the scenes from Live & Kicking from around 1999 that I’m sure we’ve discussed before:

On the subject of how great an impact lighting can make to the appearance of a set, I recall an episode of Chatty Man a few years ago where Peter Kay was the guest.

Chatty Man’s blue set fades to a desert pink colour when the guests are coming down the stairs and only turns blue when they eventually sit on the sofa.

Peter Kay decided it would be fun to go off and on and off and on again by running laps of the set, leaving him and Alan sweaty.

That aside, the sequence showed just how plain the actual set was. Nothing more than a big curtain set at an angle. And also showed that the sexy parts of the set are definitely the lighting and the shiny floor.

It did seem quite odd that the arrival staircase was the point of the set closest to the audience, yet the sofa area was deeper and further away from the audience. Meaning, if you were sat in the audience on that programme and depending where you were in the crowd, you’d get a great view of Peter Kay coming down the stairs but then a very distant view of the actual interview itself. If that makes sense.

I wonder if this is due to the way that studio was constructed and where the lighting was already positioned? Or even if that studio was ever designed to have had studio audiences in the first place.

I’m not sure which studio it would’ve been in at TLS, but it’s far more likely that it was intentional set design. It may also give extra flexibility if it needs to move to a smaller studio. You can put lights anywhere, so that’s not a concern in a proper tv studio with monopoles/tracks/hoists. Can be more of an issue in a 4-waller if you need to get truss rigged, extra dimmer racks etc etc.
Norton has a very offset chat area because of having a music performance area on the right hand side of the set.

Found it. "Offset" was the word I was looking for.