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Cold Turkey (continued)

Need I go on? A short conversation with some of the lighting men (that's how they are known-and there are no females) told me that there was no co-ordinated lighting and vision control during programme, neither was there a proper line-up at the beginning of the day. The vision staff often had to desert their position to start or stop a VT machine in another room! They also confirmed that this was a fast turnaround studio, but without the wherewithal to fast turnaround the lighting. Touché.

We moved on to another news studio in a nearby building where similar observations were made. Then across the city to a converted cinema which is now the big TRT 'Light Entertainment' studio. The Lighting gallery was in the former projection box. There were just three monitors, which were all at one side. It didn't take me too long to see that the lighting people relied more on what they saw through the window than what was being transmitted or recorded. That was a method of working that had evolved for various reasons and was the subject of one of my many daily reports that were typed up in my room in the evenings.

The CCU area and the Production Control room were several minutes walk away at the RHS of the 'stage'. Talkback between the two areas was not often used except for what sounded like heated complaints.

A few hours later, and I'm practicing my Turkish: "Yus bin durt" (114) and a smile got me the key for my room from the Receptionist. The TRT 'Hostel' is built into a wing of the vast main building to cater for the largish number of staff who move regularly between Ankara and Istanbul.

My day's observations were duly entered into the laptop.

In every studio I had seen, lamps were being run flat out and camera line up was just a western dream. Digital cameras were being introduced into the various studios, but lighting levels were still in excess of 3000 lux. Why bother with lenses, I thought, a pinhole in a piece of metal on the front of the camera would probably do quite nicely.

To many of my diplomatic comments as to possible improvements in lighting technique I was to hear the following comments from the lighting men:

'We don't have enough time'
'The Directors want it like this'

And of the Directors:
'We are not happy with the lighting'

Chatting to the CCU operators I was to hear:

'The lighting people don't know how to light'
'We have to use this much light for the cameras' (2000+lux?)

Mmmmm. Food for thought