Anglia/East of England News Discussion

It's on its way...

Worth a mention that last night's Cambridge edition of Look East did a special edition for the Rugby World cup matches at MK. The desk was gone, the studio was relit, and a plasma on a stand was present for interviews. As per previous occasions the 'rest of the news' was delivered by another reporter elsewhere in the building, I assume where down-the-line interviews are done.

How low can a camera on a ped go? At the start of the special programme last night the presumably human operated camera moved from quite high up to near floor level, tilted up to still be pointed at the presenter. I thought thinks like the autocue gear limited how low these cameras could go, which was the reason for having a rostrum in N6 and TC7 before? The camera seemed to be very low here, but it would seem highly unlikely for something like a jib to have been used!

EDIT: Here are a few caps from the end of the bulletin, when perhaps the nice moving shot was ruined slightly by the lighting grid, as happens all to often in Salford on Breakfast!

All the cameras in the Cambridge studio are remotely operated from the gallery. It's possible though being special edition that they might have had a manually operated camera in the studio.

Depends what ped design and what the panning head on it is. Some can go quite low.

http://www.thecamerastore.co.uk/pedestals/pedestals.html will give you an idea of what the ped can do (but remember that this doesn't include the panning head which is mounted on top)


I think Cambridge have all remote cameras - and would expect at least one to include a remote elevate/depress option which would allow an on-shot move as you describe. The usual tell-tale sign of a human operator is if the ped actually moves around on the floor on shot.


Not quite. Autocue hoods and underslung preview monitors usually restrict the amount of TILT you can achieve on a camera - limiting the amount you can tilt down. (Some underslung preview monitors can be folded up to allow a greater tilt - but this also means a rebalance of the camera as the CoG moves a bit I believe?)

What limits the lowest height isn't the Autocue but instead it is the remote pan/tilt head - which will add more height than a conventional manual pan and tilt head. The height addition this added to studio peds in the BBC News studios meant that a rostrum was usually preferred to add height to the (seated) presenters.

However if the presenter was stood up, rather than seated, on the shot you mention the presenter's head is obviously a good deal higher than normal, so the ped will appear lower on shot?



Very unlikely to be a jib - for lots of reasons - and it doesn't sound like a jib-type camera move.

Looking at tonight's Look East - West on iPlayer http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06dnnky/look-east-west-02102015 they are definitely doing a manual camera move with a bit of track/crab (and I don't think they have robots)

Obviously the edition of Look East you've mentioned is gone from iPlayer now, but they always seem to have something that looks like manual camera movement, which I might have mentioned before. In the headline sequence as seen in the YouTube video below (go to 04:20), the camera is clearly not just panning or zooming as the position of the presenter relative to the background is changing. This is the move used for the main edition of this opt of Look East every day.



There is also a video on YouTube from when the West opt moved to new studios, and it was explained then how all the cameras were remotely controlled - it would seem odd to get remotely controlled cameras as a cost saving and then add a camera operator in on top of this, but equally it seems unlikely that they would have a remotely controlled camera capable of actual movement. The fact that the same camera move is used every time (and indeed trying to compare the two versions of the same move during the headlines and then after the titles, they seem to be pretty identical) might suggest it's not manually operated.

A video preview for Anglia's new set can be found at:
http://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2015-10-06/new-look-studio-on-the-way-for-itv-news-anglia/

Article also charts the history of Anglia's news operation.

Great preview and a bit more info than others have given. No pun intended but does Anglia now complete the set?

Indeed they are the last region to launch the new set. From watching the online video is anyone else thinking temp set is actually what was the former second studio at Anglia House?

It does look very much like it was the second Anglia News studio - though was described as a storeroom.

Not at all unusual. It allows you to use the cameras remotely for shorter bulletins, but with less flexibility, but to use a single operator (sometimes moving between cameras) for longer bulletins which require more flexibility.

The Look East (West) move was definitely manual - a robot would have been smoother.

Do you mean studio or set ? Are you suggesting the set that was in the former second studio has been moved to a temporary studio, or that the current bulletins are coming from the set IN the former second studio?