Television Centre Redevelopment

Well tbh the BBC has a production facility in Birmingham, so they is some sort of presence their. However areas such as Yorkshire e.g. Leeds and Hull have not many dramas or programmes made from here.

Everything from Brum, expect for some minimal radio content and Doctors is moving/has moved to Bristol. It's a wonder Doctors hasn't moved yet. If it was to be commissioned now I doubt it will be set in Birmingham or produced there.

The Sarah Jane Adventures doesn't count because despite being made in Cardiff, the drama is set in London (Sarah Jane lives in Ealing). Same with Tracy Beaker, they make it in Newcastle but use London actors.

that's because they're not and never have been network production centres. That doesn't mean there'll never be a programme set or filmed in Yorkshire though. The location of studio centres doesn't have any bearing to an areas representation on screen. ITV hasn't had production studios in the South West for 20 years, but that hasn't stopped things like Wycliffe, Doc Martin and the recent Caroline Quintin series on Cornwall

I based the figures on those that the BBC management is using to justify the changes. TV Centre isn't too big, that's a myth. The bookings are plentyfull, indeed it would be possible to redevelop the area betwen 5-7 for production purposes and increase bookings. Since it is possible to make studios out of old Pie Factories, why not the Drama block. Has anyone considered flattening Centre House and using it as a lot for Albert Square, have any of the practicalities been gone into? How much revenue would be generated selling Elstree a prime peice of building land in Leafy Hertfordshire? There is also this myth over office space not being suitable, just refit it. its far cheaper than building a new building with all this designer space/pods/zen rooms. If programme ideas have to come from other interior designers ideas then that just might go a long way to explain some of the cr@p being churned out generally. Give some one a white office space and let them fill it with their own ideas. The TVC offices were good enough for the likes of Bill Cotton.

With regard to World Service it makes perfect sence to move all the news in together thats what BH was built for. It wasn't built to hoUse Vision and the channel management. The BBC is now retaining expensive buildings near to BH to fit support services. Vision & the channels should have used the offices at TVC with the news centre remodelled for the commercial activities. You would then have 2 sites in London - which ARE OWNED - MUCH CHEAPER.

As for the move 'North' (and I admit a vested interest here as that is where I am based) its done nothing for TV production to justify five quid never mind £1.2 bn. At the moment to justify Salford a trailer had to be made (its running now) having to point out which programmes have been made 'up ere'. If you have to point out to people this 'unique original northern' programming then its failed miserably.

There are huge budget constraints on programming now and its beginning to show. I notice Top Gear is reduced to four episodes with another two bulked up from what was supposed to be a Christmas special.

And throughout all this mess hidden by spin, yet we seem to be celebrating the closing of a perfectly good, purpose built TV building.

Madness.

You do realise the BBC studios is a separate commercial entity and has zero do with ''BBC management''. It doesn't matter to them how busy the studios are! It has nothing to do with them.
Of course I notice you don't bother to consider how much it would cost to renovate TVC if they had stayed there. Have you visited lately?


It isn't 1960 Troggles.
You obviously haven't worked in the place.

Although I agree that it's a shame TVC is going to scaled back it certainly isn't a "perfectly good" building. One hell of a lot of offices in that building are in desperate need of renovation. In fact I'd say only floors 4, 5 and 6 of the doughnut have offices of a decent enough standard, by and large the rest of the building's work spaces are very scruffy and not great places to work (though I've never been to the news areas that require card access). I recently had to work in an office on the third floor whose ceiling would often leak as the bar was right above it.

Considering they don't yet know where everything in the White City area will be going once those offices close in 2016 I do think it's a shame that they're not renovating the whole of TVC to bring it back into full BBC use. Have Worldwide moving into stage 6 as is planned and then have the rest of the building home to London Vision, all the other departments currently in White City and the ones based in W1 but not NBH. Close some of the studios that aren't as sustainable as the others and renovate them into offices if possible, rebuild the East Tower if there still isn't enough office space and restore the restaurant building back to its former glory as a three canteen paradise!

But then I do have a hopelessly romantic view of this building, as do most people on here, and I'm sure much of the public would rather see money diverted elsewhere and have TVC opened up to the public as planned.

It has everything to do with BBC Management, just different management but all from the same pool Peter Horrocks, Tim Davie etc. The Worldwide operation is supposed to be supportive of the BBC.

Yes I've worked at TV Centre & worked with the management mentality and many changes. The point I'm making is that it would be far cheaper to keep the place and do it up rather than have all this fragmentation across London & beyond given the figures the BBC Management has quoted. Even a small fraction of the £1.2 Bn wasted on much of the Salford exercise would have been better spent on renovation [I'll ignore anyone who trots out the asbestos cr@p] If you can keep three studios and there is a proven business case for more (which there is) then keep the place and use it for the purpose for which it was intended. Otherwise in three to five years time we will be looking to build another TV Centre in London.

Couple of further questions.
1 - I take it the rather steep zoom on the singer, is roughly when the focus puller arrives on stage, and may have knocked the pull ring a bit quicker than he would have liked?

2 - I would have thought a pre-requisit for a steadycam focus puller is for him to be able to see the output monitor at the base of the steadycam rig? At no point in the 'how they did it' is he looking at the monitor. So is he relying on the director asking him to tighten or loosen out on the shot. And if he didn't need to be so close to the camera, would it have been easier to 'off tube' the shot just off stage, or in the vision control area of the OBU?

Because Childrens and Drama are largely studio based operations and that's where those creative people would feel the need to base themselves. What you will get is a culture whereby if you want to make BBC Drama your aim would be to move to Cardiff, and if you work in Kids TV you would aim to relocate to Manchester. I dont think dividing the genres regionally and just leaving news in London is healthy for the industry.



Those genres are niche, and their nature is such that you would have a base to report to, but the programming would be made anywhere. They are usually not studio based.

When it comes to the main genres of television and making television, most people aspire to move to the capital to a central location thriving with creative people. Drama/News/Sport and now to a lesser extent Childrens are core genres and therefore in my opinion they would be better suited to a London base, with the regional production bases around the country making their contributions

Except they're not studio-based operations at all, certainly not drama, almost all of them are filmed as four-wallers. They're making shows like Casualty and Doctor Who is Cardiff because they're long-running series that make use of standing sets because they're almost always filming, but that isn't the case with 90% of the BBC's drama output. It can be filmed absolutely anywhere, and it is. And this of course fails to include the myriad independent production companies, who make a massive contribution to BBC drama. Life on Mars was set and filmed in Manchester and was a Kudos production for BBC Wales. Red and Baby Cow are based in Manchester and Brighton and make programmes all over Britain.

And before the move to Salford, barely any kids' programmes were made at TV Centre, certainly when they departed TV Centre they were only really using the studios for Blue Peter and Newsround. the vast majority were made on location around the UK and they too have numerous independent production companies.

And there's certainly not just news left in London, there's comedy and light entertainment and factual programmes and many more genres. The comedy department makes plenty of comedy dramas too.

Yes and no, the focus puller wouldn't have ran along the entire length (no need as no focus changes whilst moving up the isle and its nice a wide. The focus puller only control focus, not zoom, the camera operator would have done that zoom himself. Although I can't see so can't stay for sure there are 3 ways the focus puller was able to achieve good focus. The first (most probs used here) is during rehearsal he'll have marked the focal lengths throughout the movement at slow pace and noting the operators position and relative focal length etc. They'll rehearse this until they get it correct. Or you can also get focal length meters which sit atop the camera and read out the perceived focal length of whatever is in front. 3 It's a good focus puller who can do it by eye, for most of the move they're very wide so focus will be forgiving, he'll only need to know the critical focus for the two tighter shots which again can be marked easily enough.


Not really, the times I've done it I never actually look at the monitor but the position of the camera, I can then work out the focus from there, or as above makes marks during tesseral so I know the points and beats that i need to be on at certain points.

Remote follow focuses like that usually have a fairly limited range so the prospect of remote focus pulling isn't easy. And because you can't see the camera in space you can't anticipate what you'll need to do next. A good focus puller (and camera op) can focus correctly without thinking. (Think of the "wobble" you get when you see people hunting for focus as it gets sharp/soft/sharp fairly quickly. This is simply because the operator moves the focus ring the wrong way which you shouldn't ever see, apart from the fact editors like it.

For further reading have a look at these guys: http://www.hocusproducts.com/ they do the sort of follow focus system I would expect is being used.