Lighting: The One Show

A view of the new studio, camera left of the window, where demonstrations, and performances are televised in front of video screen incorporating internal LED lighting.

Another view of the current One Show studio from a low angle showing the grid, some of the key lights and the camera crew before transmission.

The previous studio at White City. The outside view is dominated by a large tree and two buildings left and right. The window boxes allowed for panels of ND film to attenuate the daylight

A window on The One Show

Words: Peter Phillipson Photographs: Tim Warner

The One Show is one of those flagship news-orientated magazine programme that busy people may catch from time to time. But there is real know-how when it comes to its lighting.

It transmitted its final show from its previous studio in White City just before Christmas, and then moved to its new home at New Broadcasting House a few days later. It is the third studio to house the show, the first being in Birmingham for a brief period. The common thread, from a lighting point of view, is that all three had a prominent window featured behind the main presenters. The effect that this has had on the entire approach to the lighting cannot be overemphasised.

Unlike other programmes where a lighting director sets up the main studio lighting at the beginning of the series and then leaves each show to be run by a desk operator and a gaffer, The One Show always has a lighting director – who also operates the desk – and a gaffer(s). In this way, events within the show that fall outside of the interviews taking place on the couch can be lit by experienced LDs. Dave Evans set up both studios and he and Stuart Gain are the resident LDs, covering all but a couple of programmes between them. This allows them to light other TV shows as well.

The White City studio was a converted office space located near the now-closed TV Centre. Its window faced approximately southeast, meaning that by the time the show went out in the early evening, the amount of daylight was diminished enough to make it manageable. The window box frames lent themselves to the addition of a removable, narrow frame mechanism housing neutral density film, which

The view from the outside showing the One sign half inside and half outside the window and plugged up to the northern power and data outlet position. To the left are two of the Martin 410 panels to light the opposite the studio.

The view from the outside showing the One sign half inside and half outside the window and plugged up to the northern power and data outlet position. To the left are two of the Martin 410 panels to light the opposite the studio.

was placed over the windows for five months of the year up until August. The 0.6 ND film cut down the intensity of all the visible wavelengths of light equally so that the sky and outside buildings were not tinted in anyway. The attenuation of daylight due to the film was therefore two stops. “The main lighting was on at 100 per cent in the summer and at 40 per cent in the winter, ” explains Stuart.

The old studio was kitted out initially with De Sisti 250W MSRs as the main key lights, but ARRI L7C LED Poleoperated fresnels, which were trialled in the January before the move and are also the main workhorse in the new studio, replaced these. These units provide a RGBW (three colours, plus white) output with the white tunable between 2,800K to 10,000K. Dave has set them to 5,600K for all of the key lights in both studios. “The accuracy is spot on with the temperatures that you select, we have found, ” he says.

He continues: “In the new studio, the levels for everything depend on the lighting of the sandstone café opposite, as seen through the window. I want the detail of the wall to be visible but the gain of cameras, inside, to be normally set at 3dB gain at f2.8. ” In the spring and summer months, the lighting of the walls of the café, which are part of Broadcasting House, are day-lit and augmented with six or eight Martin-410 led panels, or lit solely by them during the dark nights later in the year. This reduces the contrast of the background. The portable Martin410 panels consume only 140W each when at full and it is hard to believe just how wide an area they can cover. The panels are put out each day by the crew, along with the external portion of the featured One sign. The architectural control of the external canopy lights above the window itself can be overridden by the LD during broadcasts and isolated. The canopy is then up-lit from the pavement by a row of removable Chroma Floods and a second row is used in the darker evenings to lift the pavement level slightly, too. In the White City studio, the nighttime scene outside the studio had been lit with arrays of ARRI 1.2kW and 2.5kW alone, on stands and manned at all times by a member of the lighting crew. These HMIs are still used for televising the extra outside activities in W1.

In the studio, there is no use of frost or any diffuser on the internal lighting as it would just flare up, reflecting in the glass window. All the keying is hard-focused, cutting off any spurious reflections – from the window and elsewhere – out of the camera ’ s field of view by using long throws. Indeed, the only diffuser I saw was a well-positioned portable Chimera used to light the guest Mary Berry, who was judging a cooking event outside on the pavement. But these are used sparingly as their

Lighting

Dave Evans at the lighting desk

Dave Evans at the lighting desk

The neat data distribution area

The neat data distribution area

Martin 410 140W LED panels – only six are required to light the entire façade opposite.

Martin 410 140W LED panels – only six are required to light the entire façade opposite.

The Outside Arena, which is used as an outside quasi-OB extension to the studio. The light level on the café to the right is key to the entire studio lighting and camera settings. The architectural lighting (downlights) mounted on The One Show and Radio 1 building can be easily isolated by overriding the main architectural lighting control during the show itself. projected windage area is so large that without several sandbags holding them down, they can blow over on windy days.

All of the seated positions, on the famous sofa, are both keyed and filled by the LC7s and some are doubled up, allowing a quick solution to reset a level should that critical unit fail for some reason. An extra one is rigged to cater for a full sofa of guests, which occurs from time to time, and it can be ridden in on a fader.

The result can be seen in the photo opposite (pictured bottom left), which is a screen grab taken from a studio camera directly, showing the balance between the daylight hitting the café, the artificial lighting on the same wall, the external portions of the One Sign (that might be as high as three times as bright outside compared with the internal portions of the same sign due to the ND film), the rows of ground mounted up-lights (both inside and out), the internal lighting to the illuminated boxes between the sofa, and the window and the levels on the faces of the presenters. Although it looks very similar each day, it is achieved by compensating for the effect of the sun both seasonally and day-to-day by setting the ND film (typically 0.3 to achieve 3dB at f2.8 for spring and summer months) and external window lighting levels accordingly. Unlike the White City Studio, the sun never reaches a relative position with the window to preclude transmission thanks to the original Broadcasting House Building blocking the direct sunlight. Consequently, the studio can be used at any time during the day if required. This was one of the principal criteria when choosing the new studio location of The One Show.

There are five SONY 300 cameras used each day, with a sixth present on the one-hour version of the show. The lighting settings are well within the camera ’ s limits. The aperture is capable of being adjusted by five to six stops. If it were ever required, it would be possible to ‘knee ’ the camera set-up. This is the clipping of the maximum gain of the electronics: a means of compressing the information in the highlights that would otherwise be burnt out in relation to the exposure. “This would be done only if there were no other way of doing it, ” says Dave.

The studio lighting infrastructure is incredibly tidy and neat and was designed and set up with much pride and care. For example, the one-storey-high, low grid in the new studio is Unistrutt, soffit mounted in continuous rows 13 inches apart, from which all the studio lanterns hang. The ARRI LC-7 has pole-op attachments and the cups are easily accessible. There are four universes of DMX that terminate neatly in a data area sectioned off in southwest corner of the studio. The lighting plot shows how these are distributed. The other main lighting is the extensive use of Pulsar Chroma Floods and Battens in a variety of beam widths. There is extensive use of the Ilumo Spotlight from Lumonic: a device manufactured in Manchester. These collectively provide the colour washes on the entire set. The set was made by various companies, including SCENA, and incorporates panels back lit by LEDs by Shock Systems. The lighting installation was designed by Dave and the system integration of the entire broadcast facility carried out by Dave Addy ’ s team at DEGA Broadcast Systems, with the lighting part installed by Nick Mobsby ’ s team at LSI Woking.

Ownership of the lighting at White City was by ELP on a long-hire agreement but in the new studio practically the entire rig is owned by the BBC. The desk is an ETC Congo

The Outside Arena, which is used as an outside quasi-OB extension to the studio. The light level on the café to the right is key to the entire studio lighting and camera settings. The architectural lighting (downlights) mounted on The One Show and Radio 1 building can be easily isolated by overriding the main architectural lighting control during the show itself.

Pulsar Chroma Battens mounted to the Unistrutt grid

Ninety LED Ilumo Spots are used

Ninety LED Ilumo Spots are used

Outside hard power and data points to both the south side

Pulsar Chroma Battens mounted to the Unistrutt grid

Sitting in the key-light

This studio camera grab shows the balanced lighting through the window. It is referenced from the wall of the café opposite.

Amdrew Stacey

This studio camera grab shows the balanced lighting through the window. It is referenced from the wall of the café opposite. Copyright Dave Evans Sitting in the key-light Outside hard power and data points to both the south side (top picture) and the north side (pictured with Andrew Stacey). The outlets can be concealed by an architectural detail.

Junior, chosen purely to match those used in other BBC current affairs studios. It is interesting that when in TV Centre, the BBC owned the vast majority of it studio lights. Then, bit by bit, it sold them off as it was too costly to look after them, hiring in everything needed until there were only a few 10Ks left. But now, with some of the high-end fixed LED spotlights having little need of maintenance (to date), studio ownership is making a comeback in all but those extra one-off activities.

The studio, both before and after the move, has been used for another show, Film 2014, presented by Claudia Winkleman. In White City there was much use of tungsten to give it a cosy late-night feel. The main rig was left with two sets of lights for the two shows, with some doubling up. Now, there are still two sets of key lights, none of them using tungsten, but the keys can be set to 3,200K.

There are no dimmers in the studio: it is all hard power with DMX data streams. A typical load is no more than 20A per phase – compare this with a similar show of 10 years ago. I am a great fan of tungsten and support the Save Tungsten Campaign, especially for some exhibits in museums and live productions or events where perfect fades and perfect colour rendition are needed in niche situations, but The One Show isn ’t one of those and it has embraced LEDs properly.

There are many tours of visitors who pop across from viewing the £1bn New Broadcasting House development. These take place almost any time when the studio is not on air. There are playback states that can be evoked by those looking after a visiting party to show the studio in a scene typical of what would be expected using the back-up system.

The lighting crew is made up using a flexible arrangement of people, with the main long-standing gaffer being Andrew Stacey. On some editions he works alone with the LD; on busy shows there can be three or four extra people that might either crew or deputise for him, including Saul Harris, Gareth ‘Crockers ’ Crockford and Bruce Wardorf.

The new studio has introduced some rather difficult logistics for a floor manager to cope with that have nothing to do with lighting. To explain, the entire production office, makeup, wardrobe, green room, VT, camera racking and the production suite were all the same floor before the move. But with the new location, while the studio is at ground level, all the rest is in the basement. “It can be difficult to bring guests on and off, ” explains one production assistant. The props, camera and lighting crews are the only people to ‘live ’ in the studio itself. However, it does mean that it is rather quieter behind the camera than before.

The move of the studio and how the lighting has been planned and run is an exemplary example of what you expect of the BBC.

A shortened version of this article first appeared in ‘Lighting and Sound International’ in July 2014.