The Bobcat Fire near Los Angeles has finally reached the top of Mt Wilson. This is the location of the Wilson Observatory but also the location of many of LA tv and radio stations broadcast communication towers. Firefighters are doing their best to save millions of dollars of equipment at the this hour. In one of the images you can see the LA Basin in the background.
The Wilson Observatory yesterday as the fire approached.
The Bobcat Fire near Los Angeles has finally reached the top of Mt Wilson. This is the location of the Wilson Observatory but also the location of many of LA tv and radio stations broadcast communication towers. Firefighters are doing their best to save millions of dollars of equipment at the this hour. In one of the images you can see the LA Basin in the background.
The Wilson Observatory yesterday as the fire approached.
Worth mentioning there’s $1+ billion of electronic and communications equipment up there.
Interesting video. Start off nice to see the old France 3 logo still on the studio door nameplate!
But, for a static 'one shot' why the need for a cameraman to be physically located in the green screen studio? I'm sure there isn't one for the BBC Weather studio in BH. And also, for a green screen studio, there's a lot of depth from the stand marks for the weather presenter, to the back cloth.
Is this also used as a general green screen/AR studio, hence the need for some walkaround floor space?
Interesting video. Start off nice to see the old France 3 logo still on the studio door nameplate!
But, for a static 'one shot' why the need for a cameraman to be physically located in the green screen studio? I'm sure there isn't one for the BBC Weather studio in BH.
I suspect that camera isn't permanently dedicated to that studio - and is wheeled in as required. The BBC Weather studios have dedicated, remote controlled, cameras (the BBC weather presenters all have personalised pre-sets for camera height and shot size, lighting etc.)
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And also, for a green screen studio, there's a lot of depth from the stand marks for the weather presenter, to the back cloth.
Is this also used as a general green screen/AR studio, hence the need for some walkaround floor space?
When staging for green screen, you want to minimise the talent shadows hitting the green backdrop, to ensure you get as clean a key as possible. The lower your ceiling height, the further away you ideally stand them from the backing (as you can't light as steeply) This can also help avoid green spill/bounce hitting your talent and compromising the key.
The BBC solution that lets them stand closer to the green background is that the background is actually an LED lightbox I think - and that helps reduce the shadows. Otherwise you need decent amounts of soft light either side of the green screen that are able to light the backdrop (to fill in the shadows) without compromising the talent lighting too much. (ISTR that the BBC Weather studio can switch the background to blue if needed, though since the move to 4:2:2 digital studio production, from wideband analogue RGB chroma key feeds, keying from blue is seldom as nice as keying from green - as Green is carried with more detail than Blue)
Certainly the French approach looks entirely sensible - sharing a camera and operator is cost-effective if you have operated cameras and can use one of them - and the staging makes sense for a well designed chroma key space. (Remote camera control systems are not cheap - and there is a cost-benefit analysis to be made as to whether they save money compared to employing technical operators IF those operators can do other things as well)
It looks to me as if that weather forecast is produced using a conventional gallery approach - rather than a single person self-op. If you have the time and crew to do so - that's a better use of your budget than putting in a separate self-op weather studio for no reason ? (The BBC approach makes sense for the BBC - as they need to produce forecasts for multiple outlets - BBC One, BBC Two, BBC News Channel, BBC World News etc. many times a day - whereas many broadcasters only need to produce for one output a couple of times a day)
Ideally the green screen studio would be used for bulletins on Franceinfo instead of the pre-record voice-over which is done by the duty France 3 forecaster, but with their set-up, I don't think it'd be practical.
