BBC News 24, bad chromakey, and looping backgrounds

A week or so ago (I forget when exactly , I mean it's not a real diary event!) BBC News 24 (which I have on the TV most of the time as background noise and images) suddenly went all wierd. All of a sudden the presenters had that distinctive blue fuzzy cutout look, and they'd gone all 2D [I know television is a 2D medium but I think you DO know what I mean]. There were other signs that they were trying something new i.e. lots of pulsing single-scanline artifacts on the desk in front of the presenters etc etc. It would seem that the presenters are now sitting in front of a blue screen and they are chromokeyed (i.e. cutout) and placed on top of a background that isn't actually behind them.

"Strange"; I thought (any emails to me along the lines of "get a life" will be ignored. Thank You)

I had noticed in the past that the activity behind the presenters can be rather, ummm, interesting. None more so than a month or so ago when you could see someone leading a guided tour of the news room followed by what looked like 20 people. There wasn't quite anyone going "Hello Mum!" through the glass looking onto the news studio, but you could imagine that could happen easily enough.

Anyhoo, I noticed today that the backgound (which is basically a bunch of computer screens with occasional people sitting down at a computer keyboard doing stuff) is ON A LOOP.

Imagine you are watching the two main presenters. And there is a guest pundit/commentator sitting on the right (screen right) end of the desk. Now, the key is when they cut to that person talking [in a one-shot, i.e JUST that person filling the screen] - of course we want watch the background. You will see a background, over the pundits' right shoulder, containing many video monitors on the wall (all out of focus so you can't see exactly what they're showing) - some 6 seconds after this cut to the 'one shot' I mentioned, a man in a white shirt walks past in the background. Really! And just after he does a couple of those fuzzy video monitors that have been showing a mainly red image suddenly turn very white. Every time!

The loop seems to restart every time they cut back to the single person, in other words it might go like:

Shot of presenter and pundit, presenter askes question.
Cut to one shot of pundit, 6 seconds later man in white shirt walks past.
The pundit talks for an amount of time.
Cut back to shot of poth presenter and pundit (or perhaps just presenter)
Cut BACK to one shot of pundit - 6 seconds later man in white shirt walks in background.

MAD.

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 1:30:24 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []