[DTV]

Let's be realistic though - for it's main purpose (news bulletins) you don't need more than conventional shots - you don't hear much moaning about the lack of jib shots on GB News!

Election night? Nice to have, but again, not essential. And it does seem like there are less camera mess ups in B than in E/C.

The health and safety benefits over the Furios alone are worth the slightly slower speed.

But when I'm talking about conventional shots, I'm really talking about the movement, the pans - which you got loads of variation with in C and E, but from B you've got some 'walking' pans or are back to fairly bland stuff that would be largely achievable with remote heads. Sure, you have a few trundling wide shots, but they're nothing on the choreography of the Furios and are ruined by four lugs of cameras huddled round the desk at all times. Bluntly, a downgrade.

You say 'nice to have, but again, not essential', but given the exorbitant cost of the system (which hasn't actually been rolled out anywhere else, despite that being a justification for the bespoke development costs), I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for something beyond basic. A system of fully robotic peds was already tried and tested (though, I admit, does have its own issues); but if we are sticking to the 'nothing special is needed' argument, a set-up of remote heads, with maybe one camera operator, would be simplest.

As for fewer mess ups and health and safety - I don't recall either C or E ever being out for two whole days because of a camera issue (as B was recently), and, though the potential for injury is possibly lower, I also don't recall any stories of anybody actually getting injured by the Furios. Every argument for the electricfriends against other non-manual camera systems beyond 'ooh, shiny new thing' just seems to me to fall flat and really be an argument for something cheaper and more basic.

[IanJRedman]

Has there ever been more detail on exactly what happened in that camera incident in B? Was anything actually damaged, or was it a near miss?

[lepeterrr]

Has there ever been more detail on exactly what happened in that camera incident in B? Was anything actually damaged, or was it a near miss?

I saw someone here say one of the cameras came off the rails, and it happened during the 1 and it had to be rescued very closely.
That however has since been deleted, so who knows what happened!

[Steve in Pudsey]

The H&S point is that the tracks for the Furios need to be partitioned off with barriers but the ones in B can be walked over safely.

Having the cameras in shot is a deliberate design decision. Studio D doesn't do it for example. They absolutely could have designed B in a way that those cameras are never in each others' shot.

[Stuart]

I also like jib shots.

The electric.friends can get up quite high, and can go down fairly low, so could they not program a sequence that could imitate a basic jib shot around the desk as it moves from either Tower B or the staircase to the front of the desk, with the camera going from highest to lowest position?

I think the problem with putting a jib in B for election specials is that they've got that pesky Tower A in the way, and you don't want to risk banging into that.

On AJE I really like the sweeping jib shots across the newsroom to the desk. I think they have 2 jibs in their studio and 5 or 6 fixed peds.

[neonemesis]

Back in the days of the blue, virtual news set from the 90s / 2000s the cameras were entirely robotic and trackless. I'm curious as to why couldn't they use these systems in B? In standard presentation they could be set up to do the jobs of the monoliths, but then they could get out of the way when not needed.

I understand the choice of the furios in E/C, the space was so limited and they wanted the cameras in shot. I remember Chris Cook mentioning when we first saw designs of E "the cameras are part of the set"... which worked. The furios looked dynamic and agile, which could be seen as a metaphor for broadcasting rolling news directly from Europe's largest newsroom.

By comparison, the monoliths look slow, cumbersome and awkward. I hope not a metaphor for the period we are currently in....

[AverageOrangeTurnip]

A weird moment on BBC News at just before 10am this morning when Chris Warburton (covering for Nicky Campbell on 5Live) said goodbye to viewers on BBC News, BBC Two and iPlayer - encouraging viewers to "continue on 5Live or BBC Sounds - only to reappear on the News Channel for the top of the hour. It was also strange that the blue strap on the News Channel said "Chris Warburton" before 10am, but "Nicky Campbell" afterwards. Very odd.

[Steve in Pudsey]

I think the original cameras in B were the fully robotic trackless ones like in A?

[oscillon]

A weird moment on BBC News at just before 10am this morning when Chris Warburton (covering for Nicky Campbell on 5Live) said goodbye to viewers on BBC News, BBC Two and iPlayer - encouraging viewers to "continue on 5Live or BBC Sounds - only to reappear on the News Channel for the top of the hour. It was also strange that the blue strap on the News Channel said "Chris Warburton" before 10am, but "Nicky Campbell" afterwards. Very odd.

Most likely it was a mistake - at 10:03, after the 5 live headlines, the UK feed crashed back into the World feed.

[DTV]

I think the original cameras in B were the fully robotic trackless ones like in A?

No, B was all originally manual peds, but with four cameras having remote heads. Of course, they did later butcher the soft set to install a tracked camera above the LED videowall. 

At launch, A had three remote head cameras and one fully robotic one, with D the inverse, with three robots and one remote head.