General Presentation/Logistics Questions

Those 'inset' things do look very dated now. It's odd that they're still quite common on US TV News.

I actually quite like those inset ideas. However, like them, I am also quite dated myself. I think they're a whole lot tidier than those vast expanses of newswalls, which just look awkward.

CNNI uses plasmas in their Atlanta and London sets. They have some "portrait" plasmas, as well as the conventional "landscape" ones. Genuine question from an ignoramus: are those specially made in the portrait shape, or are they just conventional screens, rotated on a wall mounting, and with the image/film rotated by a computer in the gallery??? Genuine question, which may be of dire silliness for some of you experts. But as a layman, I genuinelly don't know. LOL. Spurious and curious.)

Something I've never understood is why, does everyone have to print out A4 numbers on a computer and stick them to the front of a camera? It works but just looks so out of place in these modern TV studios. Don't camera come with numbered lights any more?


It could well be a spare panel or one that's not used any more and is just being kept there until something else is found to do with it

http://yfrog.com/h2yigudj In this photo taken by Lorna Dunkley, Sky's cameras have electric numbers, which are presumably changeable dependent on the camera position.

They're 'normal' screens mounted that way.
As for the image, if it's a graphic or similar it'll be made or shot that way round (I'm not sure how the designer works, presumably they just turn their video monitors round too). Of course if there's a permanant shot of a fixed camera, you just mount the camera around 90 degrees too. Midland Today's would either have been 2 cameras or one 4:3 camera feed somehow split into 2 (my money's on the former)

I don't know if they're ever used for something like a 2-way interview but if so they would rotate it using a DVE - it would be a lot of hassle getting the other end to rotate their camera. However I'd have thought it's not that great to do as you'd have to cut off most of the image and zoom right into a small strip down the middle.

Sky News appear to have vertical plasma screens at the back of their set showing their website (although they look longer than 16:9), presumably that's just a setting in the PC used to display it.

They're likely to be normal plasmas if mounted on their own. You just ensure that what you fill the plasmas with is suitable - either by shooting it at 90 degrees - for which you can buy special camera mountings - which I think the BBC may have used for one of their previous Washington sets, or buy shooting normally and cropping/rotating - though in 16:9 this is pretty tricky.

The One Show used their 103" plasma portrait-style when first launched - and had different DVE settings for different set-ups, allowing an OB to cropped left and right to fill the plasma, or less cropped but with bars above and below if the framing wasn't suitable for a crop. They also had the preview monitor for the AUX line feeding the Plasma in the gallery monitor stack rotated so they could see everything was OK without having to have the plasma on-camera.

Portrait plasmas work really well for UK maps...

If the plasmas are in a "wall" arrangement with lots of them showing sections of an image - then it is possible to buy plasmas with internal DVEs, so you feed all of the plasmas with a single 16:9 normal signal, and the internal DVE in each plasma chops out the bit it needs and rotates it if required.

This lets you build broken up walls with horizontal AND vertical plasmas showing different sections of the image.

Yes, that looks better. I've seen several news studios with sheets of paper and it just looks silly.

Numbers aren't changed on a camera if it changes position. The number has to correlate with what's it's called on the vision and sound mixing desks, the camera control unit and on the router, so it's not something you change. Of course if camera 4 broke and was replaced then they would take the '4' light off the old one and put it onto the new one.

The CNN portrait plasmas I was referring to are nothing more than screensaver or logo screens. Not used for interviews or story images, just idents. So, I guess that makes them easier to use, based on your collective replies above? Thanks for those, by the way.

I think I may have asked this before, but does anyone know where I can find a real photograph of the BBC News virtual glass set of the mid to late nineties? The virtual set was configured to make the studio appear immense, when we all know it was actually quite small. Does anyone know where I can get to see an image of the real set (all green screen, I would imagine)?

http://www2.tv-ark.org.uk/mistakes/index.html#
http://johnniecraig.wordpress.com/2010/09/23/conspicuous-consumers-sue-lawley/

Also, in the two images above, what are the set-backdrops physically made from? i.e. is it hardboard, or curtain material, or rubber, or plastic, or what? (Acknowledgement to the owners of the material in these links.)

Regarding insets, I think they're a perfectly nice way of doing something if done well. Certainly the 1999 style looks dated today however when they did the revamp of N6 is 2002(?) with the red walls and nicely placed halogen lights on the black bar they redid it into a sort of plasmaesq style that looked a bit tidier.

Presumably if you were to do it today with more modern graphics systems it would look a bit more subtle, perhaps taking into account things like shadows on the set.

I've often wondered why some TV studio cameras have printed labels stuck onto them. Although I appreciate they aren't normally seen by the public, they don't look professional or even permanent, despite what people have said about camera positions or designations in the gallery being permanent in news studios.

LED displays underneath the flat Autocue screen, or even something printed but more permanent would look better. The Gallery pictures we see today all seem to have LED displays beneath the screens, which are presumably changeable as the situation requires.

Remember though that the camera side of the studio very rarely gets seen in vision, and this requirement to look professional doesn't exist. Yes, they could spend a load of money on LED numbers which can be reconfigured, or they could spend 0.01p on some new numbers quickly bashed up in Word and printed out. The big paper numbers are probably even better anyway. I would assume the main reason for having them is so that guests can be told which camera to look at rather than playing the hunt the red light game.

I imagine that like any office, once you're behind the cameras you'll have all the normal trappings of a professional office, complete with in jokes stuck up on the walls and that annoying person who wears a Simpson's tie everyday in the fleeting hope that people will think he's hip and trendy.



In the Gallery it's not unusual to want to swap a couple of monitors around, or rename sources (especially O/S's) as requirements (and even programmes) change - the UMD (Under Monitor Display's) are normally coupled to the router controlling the sources, so when you change the source in the Router, the display will automatically change too. They used to be done with camera tape and a sharpie (and often still are).

That last bit is a good point, they are a bit more visable especially compared with the old days when the number was on the red lights. Although it is rare for a guest in a news studio to look into camera unless they're doing a down-the-line.


Yes but of course you have to be careful in news studios as outsiders do come into them and they're often fairly important people!


Often the displays under the monitors are a mix of digital displays and masks made to look like digital displays stuck on front of lights for non-routable monitors.