This is the 'Production Control Room' or 'Gallery' of
the TV Studio, which I built to resemble a typical
BBC gallery. To the right, you can just see a bit of the 'studio
floor', and some of the studio
lights on their pantographs (scissor like extensions) through the big window. Beside me
are the transmission, preview and the camera monitors. And behind, over
my left shoulder is the rostrum camera, tucked away in the corner. Useful
for acquiring pictures from drawings or books etc.
Back in the Summer of 2004 (oh dear, I'm starting to sound like a Bryan Adams' song!) we were given a substantial grant to upgrade the TV Studio. We contacted several companies and Boxer Systems was chosen to do the upgrade, and all the time we worked together to fine tune what was needed. The changes were brilliant, bringing it to nearly a broadcast quality facility by utilizing what's known as SDI, the industry means of digitally connecting the Studio components together. All of the resultant pictures and sounds are then digitally recorded on DVCAM recorders.
Another great improvement, is having all high quality colour monitors.
This is a pretty old picture of the control desk, with the very first Vision Mixer.
The Ross, Synergy mixer above is fully digital, used in broadcast studios and OBs around the world. The old
Aston character generator (for titles etc.) has been replaced by a digital Aston Green. The Abacus A53 DVE (Digital
Video Effects) used to make the pictures tumble or shrink in size has gone, as the vision mixer has two very powerful effects devices on board.We were also fortunate in being able to add to and upgrade the existing Ikegami cameras, which are near broadcast quality
Nearest
the window, is the lighting console which fades upto 36 of the studio
lights. Each of those being around 2,000 watts. To give you some idea
of their power, your average household bulb is around 100 watts. Just
next to it is a computer which we use for graphics and for sound effects,
there's the studio count down clock which we can use to note details of
the programme being made, as well as counting us down to the start. .
This is a picture I took of just some of the O B (Outside Broadcast) vehicles at one of the biggest rigs I've worked on. It was the last game at Wembley, which just happened to be England vs. Germany.
You can probably see that it was a pretty wet & miserable day. And the result of the game was equally so. They used 36 cameras in all, and when that WASN'T enough, they (Carlton 021 Outside Broadcasts) took some pictures from the ZDF (German broadcasters) as well. Just think, that's more than a camera per player!
This is inside the Ground. You might just make out the WEMBLEY writing on the seats in the back of the shot. In the foreground, you can see a typical 70:1 lens attached to one of the 'main match cameras'. Quite apart from the camera, the lens itself costs about as much as the budget I had to build the whole of our TV Studio!
Here's the monitor stack in the Control Room. In the centre, you can see the main Transmission and the Preview monitors, with all the camera monitors, VT (video tape) monitors, Graphics, Off Air, and VT clock monitors etc.
Bottom right, you can just see the two control panels of the Sony 7000 series 46 channel digital vision mixer.
Incidentally, this stack is across the width of the truck, and is folded inward when the side of the truck is collapsed.
Here are three of the main match cameras, rigged high up on the gantry of the Rugby ground, with the main commentary area set out on the portable table in the centre of the picture.
Each camera is connected back to the Scanner (outside broadcast truck) via the red 'Triax' cable plugged into the back of the camera.
