Cosmetic Surgery Live.
Endemol Uk had a requirement to transmit a months worth of daily Live programmes from a cosmetic surgery hospital in Manchester. I was assigned as engineering manager and dealt with all the technical planning and installation along with the daily running of the programme.
We supplied an eight camera outside broadcast unit with a separate gallery in a mobile trailer to allow extra space for
production staff.
The hospital was split into several areas:
* A studio with 3 cameras for links with in vision plasma screens- these were mounted in portrait mode and the images were separately switched via a mixer aux and DVE unit to rotate them through 90 degrees
*A reception area for additional links with separately switched in-vision plasma screens
*2 consultancy rooms for celebrities to receive non invasive procedures which included 2 handheld cameras, a remote hothead camera and a miniature 'syringe camera' for close up examinations
*In addition there were 2 camera positions in the recovery ward where patients were interviewed following operations. A twin channel DVE was overlaid on to a graphic image to allow links between the areas in a news style format.
Due to legal reasons, some invasive operations could not be performed in the UK so had to be downlinked via satellite from centres in Los Angeles. 2 SNG vehicles were used to receive these and also transmit a main and backup path of the mixed programme back to Channel 5 presentation at Ascent media in London.
Other facilities required were a 6channel EVS hard disk system to play back VT's and Graphic Elements for the programme. Also some sections were pre-recorded 'as live', edited then played into the programme to allow for logistical problems in moving presenters quickly between areas in the hospital.
Finally viewers were able to send in pictures and comments via their mobile phones - so a networked area was set up where the images could be received, formatted and sent to the truck via a scan converter for recording to disk or inserting live into the programme.
Weakest Link
The BBC had a requirement to produce 100 episodes of ‘The Weakest Link over a 1year period whilst they were waiting for a new studio to be completed at Pinewood, which would eventually become its permanent home.
We were given the task of converting an empty photographic stage in Wandsworth into a fully functional television studio with 3 weeks notification
This included fully soundproofing the studio and installing a resin floor to allow camera pedestals to track smoothly, along with providing all the relevant technical facilities including a full production gallery, air conditioning system and a PSC interview studio.
In such a short timescale, and due to the fact that we would only be filming for 2 days each week, I came up with an innovative approach to make the project happen on time and within budget.
I decided that we would use a modular arrangement and split the project into several areas, our 6 camera outside broadcast unit would be used to provide the MCR, VT and camera control facility . But as the trucks gallery area was not large enough for the production requirements of the programme, I elected to build a production control room in an empty storage area next to the studio to house the director, script supervisor, lighting, graphics and auto-cue operators. This would ultimately cut down on installation time, give the production staff a large full featured gallery with easy access to the studio floor and also give us the added benefit of being able to use the OB unit for other projects in the production downtime and achieve maximum equipment utilisation.
In addition there was an extensive sound requirement including hard disk grams play-ins and multitrack, so it was decided to use a dedicated sound vehicle for the project.
Whilst the studio infrastructure was being completed, I designed and managed the construction of the production gallery and the installation of cable routes to wall-boxes on the studio floor and gallery that linked to an exterior wall box in the car park where the 2 vehicles would connect. A system of numbered multicores was devised that carried all the gallery vision feeds along with mixer, matrix control and tally and audio signals. A facility wide Trilogy talkback system was selected as it could be connected using standard CAT5 network cabling and was easy to program and adjust the system from a PC even during recording.
On the studio floor there were 5 cameras, 4 on blacked out pedestals and 1 on a techno- crane. Other facilities included video projection of the graphics system for the contestants to view, A system to flip-flop switch questions and autocue feeds to the central podium and camera prompters and several mix/,monitoring facilities for the statisticians and scorers.
The project was completed on time and the programme had a very successful run at the height of its popularity. Not only did it succeed from a technical standpoint, it also achieved results for a considerably less than a traditional studio budget.
HTV studio B2
Endemol UK had a requirement to fit out a studio for the Game shows 'Brainteaser' and 'Memory Bank' which transmit live to Channel 5 on a daily basis.
HTV studios in Bristol were selected as they had an empty Studio and control rooms and Picture Canning were contracted to provide all the technical facilities to produce the programme. As there was no equipment or transmission line installed on site, I was tasked with designing and managing the installation of facilities from the ground up.
'Brainteaser' is a very graphic intense show and I had to select equipment that would be able to cope with multiple layered DVE effects and Keys, automated hard disk play-ins and also provide sufficient backup facilities in the event of an equipment failure. We also had a fairly tight timescale and I decided that in this instance it would be best to pre-build and test as much of the equipment off site as possible so that it would be a simple task to reinstall on site, with the maximum confidence that most of the technical issues had already been resolved in testing.
To achieve this, the system was created on a modular basis with all the equipment racks having termination panels and a system of pre-made cable looms for interconnection.
This consisted of:
*A Modular production monitor stack with integrated UMD's, Station clock and Off-air monitoring.
*A Gallery control desk with Vision mixer panel, pre-wired matrix override and Talkback panels
*2 System Racks with outgoing presentation monitoring, Matrix mainframes, camera CCU's Backup VTR, ISDN communications interfaces, talkback mainframe, Dual SPG's and various other outboard equipment.
*An Engineers Desk With camera OCP's, preview monitoring, matrix and comms panels, PC setup systems, server control panel, and Grade 1 quality control monitoring
*A rack with vision Mixer and server mainframes- located outside the control room to minimise equipment fan noise.
*An audio area with system racks, audio console, outboard equipment racks and monitor stack.
*An area for handling live phone calls into the programme with associated TBU's and communications.
All links to the studio floor for cameras, preview monitoring and talkback plus data for contestant buzzers, in-vision score boards and plasma screens were made with pre-built and tested multiway cables allowing for a fast install.
The Graphical element consisted of 2 specialised PC's with associated Key and Fill signals that were integrated into the scoring and buzzer system. They also had a GPI connection to the vision mixer in order to automate certain effects that required the graphic elements and Keyers and DVE to work synchronously.
The show was programmed into a series of pre-built vision mixer cues and Macros as the operator would not have been able to carry these out manually. In effect, once the show was running, all the operator had to do was select a button and a pre-made sequence would run which, for example would select sources, trigger a DVE move, set up the correct Keying sequence and run a hard disk cue. I also set up a system where the next state could be previewed and checked before it was taken to air.
In addition to the System Design and project management of the build, I also had responsibility for handling the live transmission element. Working with NTL we selected a system where 2 paths were sent to channel 5 presentation. SDI and AES audio from each path was encoded into an MPEG2 stream and then embedded into an ASI data path back to CH5 pres via NTL's Bristol office on separate fibres- then along 2 diverse routes back to Ascent media in London in order to minimise points of failure.
