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FROM SET TO SCREEN
“Most people think we must be regular users of Steadicam but we never use it on the show, “ says Mike Pontin. “Instead,” he contin- ues, “we use a hand-held camera (the Ikegami HL 55, weighing in at 17lbs with cable) mostly on the shoulder. It runs back via a multiway cable we’ve engineered ourselves to a control trolley on which the recorder is mounted and also on which we have a Grade 1 monitor with vectorscope.
“This enables the Lighting Director to make accurate judgements about exposure because he can adjust the colour temperature and set white balances. The trolleys are quite light and portable so can be taken to the top of a block of flats or used in a factory. They can also sit quite readily within the camera van.
“One of the objectives of the Lighting Director is to get the picture right as recorded as we don’t tend to spend a lot of time in post- production doing grading. Full tapes produced from that process then go into an Avid suite which has a digital computer-based system. This is, of course, a huge advantage to video as previously editing had to be done via an on-line suite. From Avid, we get a floppy disk with an edit decision list. This can be fed into another computerised system which assembles it all on to a final master tape.
“Then it’s into the dubbing process - using an AMS Audiofile with Logic 1 mixer - where background has to be smoothed out and ambi- ences added to bring the soundtrack back to real life. It takes us about a day and a half on each show to complete editing and get the track laying and mix down.
“We changed over to DigiBeta tape for recording about two years ago which brought us great benefits compared with previous ana- log recording. Analog was often blighted by blockouts on the tape so everything had to be carefully scrutinised to make sure it was free of any blemishes. That was a very time consum- ing process. Since going to digital tape, the recording process is now something we can almost take for granted.” ■
rce Be With You!
rce Be With You!
gle-camera technique is that you have to shoot every scene many times over which of course then means very intensive editing. The net result is that you have immense freedom to pick up exactly the nuances you want which, in turn, gives the whole process greater adjustability.”
Flexibility and, above all, speed is just what you need when you’re shooting three shows a week - using many of the same cast and some of thesamesets- for50weeksoftheyear.
More like a military manoeuvre than a shoot- ingschedule, it must be a nightmare to plan. Production scheduler Nigel Wilson is surprisingly sanguine about the whole business. His is the engine-room where a computer has been eschewed for an extraordinary card system dot- ting the walls which minutely dovetails the Red, Green and Blue units in hand-written instructions.
Naturally everything starts with the scripts and there are something like 60 writers keeping the programme supplied with quality material. Says Pontin: “One of the advantages of not having soap storylines means we can have such a wide range of writers working for us because ours are always stand-alone stories. Being screened before the watershed is, I think, a good discipline. We don’t shy away from difficult subjects but try to find a way to treat them so they’ll be acceptable to a big audience, including quite young viewers.”
That famous original opening credit sequence of foot-slogging coppers may have been replaced by today’s flashier-dashier montage but it’s a plea- sure to report, and fans of the show will surely confirm, that the exploits of Cryer, Carver, Quinnan, Ackland, Stamp and Co still retain a thor- oughly traditional ‘copper on the beat’ quality.
The Bill is now some 18 months into a current three-year contract with the network which was the envy of the industry. “We have managed, creaking and groaning at times,” says Pontin, “to maintain this thrice-weekly production for more than three years now. No doubt we can continue to do that. Whether the public’s same appetite for it will be there in the distant future naturally remains to be seen.” ■ QUENTIN FALK
Fuji Professional Video are delighted to be the major supplier of tape for The Bill.
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