Facilitating TV By Committee, By George Jarrett (Part 2)

BBC Studios and Post Production won't waste or desert the work it has done in Elstree when they go back to the left-hand side of the building and TC 1-3. The obvious stuff – new power infrastructure and air con, and a common apparatus area – will mix with what Popkin holds dear about studio D right now.
"We will still have dedicated galleries because part of our offering is different to an OB truck," he said. "We are trying not to use multi viewers; we try to go for bigger monitoring just to give you something different, and people generally like the gallery experience. It is a much bigger space, and you are close to the studio floor."
The BBC team has essentially refurbished four studios, making them as identical as possible as age allows. "We have gone for completely flat screen; they are all LCD production galleries. And all the lighting galleries are OLED with the odd LCD. All the sound designs are almost identical, and we have gone to largely stage box design, rather than lots of hard, built-in wiring," said Popkin.
"Jack field spaces have been drastically reduced," he added. "We had to simplify because the time we had to do the move was so limited that we could not have done a studio in the more BBC traditional way."
One benefit of cloning studio design is the given flexibility of being able to move studio engineers around. Everything is HD switchable of course.

Changing The Producer's Perception
Where lighting galleries are manned by the same number of people, the production galleries can be like a rush hour tube carriage. "It is TV by committee these days," said Popkin. "It used to be a team of four in ATV's day here, but maybe now it is 20 people. That is really the biggest change we have seen."
Studio D's sound gallery is an odd shape, but clearly works well. The sidewalls and ceiling have been changed to improve the acoustics. The Studer Vista 8 came up from TVC6, and was due new motherboard and new software upgrades, one being loudness management.
"It is not being adhered to yet by anyone, but it is slowly coming in," said Popkin. "It is going to change the way some people want to mix, and it is going to change the producer's perception of what is being mixed."
The Studer Vista 8 does not have Vista Mix like the others we found, but the sound gallery is interesting for the reason that it has no AES router.
"The OnAir 3000 is our router. This is digitally connected to the Vista 8 so any source is available both ways. We remotely control the Vista to do the DT routine and to do tone to line and things like that," said Popkin.
The sound desk needs to be turned on 24/7, but is live the whole time anyway. MADI is used to go out to other destinations, but the two desks have their own HD link. This has cost saving and technology shrink advantages. The gallery does 5.1 but the rear speakers are hidden for space reasons.
"We are doing less 5.1 than we were two years ago," said Popkin. "I assume the reason is probably because of cost, and currently the only live show we are doing is Strictly Come Dancing. "

Supporting The George Lucas Stages
Tapley showed off the Vista 8 brought up from TC1. Completely re-configured and updated it was linked to an OnAir 3000.
"So the way we use it is basically the sound desk does all of the IO from the studio, and then we have a load bar high density tie line that is run to the OnAir 3000 core. On the surface the OnAir 3000 is a Gram Ops desk, but underneath it has a massive matrix that is doing our entire studio routing via BNCS control, or Pro-Bel control," he said. "It is an 'under the bonnet feature'."
Peter Bridges suggested that the physical IO only limits operators here. Tapley continued: "It is massive. Then it is just a case of writing the Pro-Bel control, which is done via our BNCS panel.
"Each area that needs studio routing capability for either their monitoring of for VT input and output will access the OnAir 3000. We moved away from copper lines down to the studio floor and are now working MADI. In here it is fibre optics."
So out in the studio – the George Lucas stage set up with the Your Face Sounds Familiar set – there are five wall boxes capable of handling three stage boxes via fibre optic. Each wall box has three fibre optic points, which are quad core, multi node fibre, which then run back to the sound control room.
"Each stage box can handle 40 mic inputs and 16 line inputs," said Tapley. "For this show we have got three stage boxes rigged up, but effectively we can handle 240 mic circuits from the studio."
Not long ago cables were snaking all over the place when Later With Jools Holland was shot. Now it is, "so much easier, much more multi-layer, and much preferred by the crews."
Tapley talked about re-configuring frames for MADI circuits, and the latest Studer software including Vista Mix. "The Vista desks are so flexible. This one can handle 760 mono inputs and 40 stereo inputs, and this is just the stereo configuration. There is a surround configuration."
All of the talk about four 12-way Vista mixes, eight stereo groups and four stereo masters points to a rigging or design for handling big LE shows like Strictly and its orchestra (60-80 radio mics and 60 band circuits). For an OB based show the configuration can change easily.
"When we do Strictly, because it is live, there is no time to stop: if you need to do a costume change, it is another mic," said Tapley.

Odd Incidents Of RF Interference
The issue of frequency as it is after re-allocation came up. Popkin said: "There are different frequency limitations in this area. It is hard to find enough frequencies and certainly our providers are busy looking at digital as a solution."
Before digital options can be trusted however, "The number of channels that people want is just rocketing."
White space equipment will be "bad news" because the BBC will not know what other people will do. "We already have odd incidents of RF interference which we have not managed to track, but they don't get in the program chain luckily," said Popkin. "The production industry came off badly in favour of wireless phones. For the amount of money the sector earns, we were horribly treated."
Bridges added: "It is down to discipline. The worse thing is when you have a freelance PSC operator come in who has not even thought about frequencies, and he just fires up his radio mic."
Loudness control emerged again as the final issue, Popkin saying: "There is very little you can do about the producer screaming over talkback and demanding 'more audience, more audience'. This is the most common thing we have to face these days, and we have to tell them, 'No. Sorry. You have reached your 23 and that's it.' Ultimately they are the people who are going to have to sign up to it."
Bridges added: "The answer is you mix by ear and you turn your monitoring up a little bit and you bring your main limiter in to sort of bring it all down. If people are going to have to stick to it, that is effectively what they are going to have to do."
Tapley pointed to a different angle: "These days so many sound mixers are freelancers, and it is very much about pleasing production, and they want to hear loads of audience. They want everything loud and in their face. If you are not delivering what they want you won’t get booked again."

Read the article in the online edition of Regional Film & Video here.
(IT/JP)