I attended the TV Studio Masterclass today, along with a few others from the Audio Production course. To begin with we went upstairs to the control room, where we were shown the monitoring screens, which had feeds from all the studios cameras, and also had a computer that allowed decals and images to be overlaid onto the camera footage. All the footage is captured and recorded onto hard drive, with a backup saved onto a separate drive in case the standard drive has issues and footage is lost. This footage is also uploaded to a server for extra safety. The mixing desk was in the same location as the recorders, which were mounted in racks. We are afforded a surprising amount of headroom, as 0dB is actually -18dB, so we should be aiming for amber with most dialogue, and are able to dip into the red occasionally if necessary. Interestingly enough, the audio has to be delayed slightly, as the video signal sent from the studio arrives more slowly, so a delay has to be used to keep audio and video in sync. We were also shown the radio mic rack, which shows when mics are in use, and also when their batteries are running low, as well as the patch bay.

We then went into the studio itself, which had a load of cameras, several with an autocue rigged up, allowing actors to read scripts without taking their eyes of the camera. We had a look at the old system for taking sound in which consisted of plugging into the interface (phantom power controls were at the back, oddly enough), and sending that to a tie-line where it will be sent to the mixing desk, where it will be mixed before being recorded. The new system worked in a similar way, but the new Focusrite interface had phantom power controls at the front, and essentially amalgamated most of the equipment it was replacing into one box. It also had a USB connector, allowing for local recording directly from the interface, as well as sending it to the mixing desk.

It all seemed rather complex, but I can see the benefits of being confident with a multi-cam setup, so I’ll need to do some research into how the system works in greater detail, and perhaps I’ll look into exploring multi-cam projects in my Semester B Audio Project.