44 TVBEurope The Workflow


Minicams open remote possibilities for OB docs


production team to monitor individual inputs, mix sources and record broadcast- quality sound. McLachlan wanted to make it so intuitive that the hothead operator can manage all 24 cameras, thus a single button- push switches both vision and camera control simultaneously to the selected camera. The operator can also select the appropriate 8-channel audio feed by either audio-follows-video or by manually selecting sources. “Home life can be chaotic.


There were no rules for the families, no restrictions on their movement, so the system had to be versatile, quick and accurate. With our system, the operator can move fast and follow the action from room to room,” he adds.


www.tvbeurope.com July 2013


Family life: One of the families taking part in ITV’s latest observational documentary


By David Fox


TWOFOUR’S HAPPY FAMILIES production for ITV is a new four-part fly-on-the- wall series that is claimed to have broken new ground in observational documentaries by filming everything with remote cameras using a sophisticated rig that was installed and de- rigged in just four days. The equipment had to be mobile enough to easily move around the country, so that it could be used to shoot for seven days in each of four consecutive locations. Each shoot involved tight


working spaces in typical urban households. Crews had limited installation times, while the need for discreet camera work and the requirement to shoot in multiple rooms dictated the type and amount of production equipment that could be used. This type of fly-on-the-wall filming has been done before, but has evolved since the days of such programmes as The Family (the 1974 BBC series made by


producer Paul Watson, and directed by Franc Roddam, which has often been cited as the beginning of reality television). For HappyFamilies,farmore


locations have been used in short succession,while the producers wanted to avoid interfering with families’ daily activities (something that is impossible if a camera crewis following around everywhere).Thismeant adopting a newapproach. There could be noENGcamcorders, no trailing wires and no turning of a bedroominto a production suite. “To my knowledge this is a unique production as we had four different locations to film within three months. I don’t know of another show that has tackled so many locations in such a short time with 20-plus cameras,” says Nick McLachlan, MD of Minicams, which was contracted to fulfil the installation in all the houses. At each location, his crew installed Panasonic PTZ cameras that McLachlan says “are high quality, reliable and can be controlled manually and with


pre-sets. With only four days to rig each venue, they were ideal.” A diversity radio microphone set up was chosen to match the available radio spectrum at each site, and was coupled with a multipoint active antenna system to provide optimum RF coverage. The sound and picture feeds were fed through into a neighbouring property or Portakabin where Minicams set up a Mini-Rig portable production unit and gallery. The Mini-Rig has been designed by Minicams to be rapidly installed. It can take in multiple HD video streams and audio channels, and is claimed to be simple to control via a fully customisable graphical user interface and touchscreen control panel (following Happy Families, the rig’s first major outing, the GUI has been developed further to make PPU control even slicker). “There were two main challenges to address. With a small crew at the production desk, it can be very difficult to manage so many cameras. And


secondly, co- ordinating the audio with the live video feed is difficult when there are so many microphones in multiple locations,” explains


McLachlan. To solve


this, Minicams wrote new control software that could activate cameras by group and enable the audio to follow that particular set of cameras. Up to 64 microphones with remote-able pre-amps are routed into the MADI- connected system; 32 microphones can be assigned to the control surface at any one time, allowing the


Minicams Mini-Rig portable production unit is “a great fast-in, fast-out solution”


Each episode interweaves stories from the various family members. “It feels like a national conversation when the families are talking about issues that affect them,” says David


Photo: ITV


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