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Turkish De-light 1999 contd.

page 4 of 7

I was shown to my quarters. TRT has a hostel wing which provides accommodation for the many staff who have to commute between Ankara and Istanbul on  a regular basis. Down long, wide dimly lit corridors I followed Ebru; past a hotel type reception area and on to my room, well, actually a suite of rooms. This was where, I was told, the General Director of TRT, lived for four years before securing his own accommodation. Huge bedroom with balcony, en-suite bathroom and kitchen with well stocked (wine, whisky, soft drinks) fridge. Hey, this was nearly as good as home!

After a shower and a quick aperitif, I rejoined Ebru who offered to show me the venue for their Election Programme before we went out for a meal. Because TRT had not completed its main production studios on this new site, they had chosen to stage it in their enormous (everything about TRT was big, or vast, or impressive) library. The roof was of a multiple sawtooth cross section, the vertical bits were glazed windows, 300 of them, allowing light onto the slopey bits which provided a nice, even, bright ‘North light’ for the readers below. Great for a library, less good for a TV show spanning night and day.

 There was a single run of scaffold tube around the perimeter of the library, which had a gallery all around its shoe box shape. The room was about 40 metres long by about 15 metres wide and perhaps ten metres high. A number of lamps, all HMI had been rigged. A mixture of 2.5’s, 1.2’s and 575’s. Although rigged, it was clear that they had not been focused. The set was largely in place, and indeed had similar features to that gripping video that sat languishing in my luggage. I slept on it, helped by a never ending supply of Yeni Raki (Pastis) and excellent food in a nearby restaurant, accompanied by Ebru. Live music at the table added to the ambience of a splendid evening.

Monday dawned. Breakfast was served at my table; other lesser (!) guests had to help themselves. At times like this you realise that the BBC still has an excellent reputation abroad, and as its ambassador, I was treated like a king.

0900 came and having trekked around the vast building, I eventually found the library and entered the arena once again. It was a cloudy day but my trusty old Seconic light meter indicated 800 lux of ambient coming down from that roof full of windows.

Emir, my other translator, who spoke English with a Cambridge/American accent, having spent time in both places, knew what I was thinking as he shared my gaze skyward. “This light will spoil the image on the Pro cube wall and on the two BP units, will it not?” Absolutely, I agreed, wondering how easy it was going to be to get things done, quickly. It was time to prioritise my problems. Blackout was clearly number one. The Back Projection units were not of the latest design and would struggle to compete with normal studio lighting. Now normal lighting, to me and probably you, is about 800 lux. The programme was to start at 2200 hours and go through the night until midday. Now, assuming blackout, was it to be an HMI or a tungsten rig. If it had been a clean sheet of paper, tungsten plus dimmers would have been an easy decision. It reminded me of the old anecdote of the traveller who arrived at the crossroads in the middle of nowhere, only to find that there was no signpost. There was, however an old tramp sat by the side of the road. When asked which was the best way to the travellers destination, he was told, “Begorrah, if I was going there, I wouldn’t have started from here in the first place!”

But I looked at the amount of rigging that had already gone up and didn’t have a heart to ask them to take it all out (I do hope some of the Charge hand electricians that I have worked with over the years are reading this) But even before I made that decision, I needed to know what lighting kit was actually available. There had been much talk of a lighting depot, now was the time to investigate. I visualised a lighting hire shop just down the road, but was not prepared for the reality. TRT had their own depot full of a variety of fairly familiar heads, from Mizars to 4K HMI’s, Par cans, 5K’s. 2K’s, pups et al. Now how many Broadcasters do you know who have all that on tap? They even had a storekeeper who knew about his stock! And, lo, there were dimmers-lots of them. I was beginning to relax.

I received an invitation to join Tarik Baykur for lunch. Tarik is my contact at TRT, head of training, a former film cameraman. It was clear that he was an ideas man, committed to new technology, definitely not a Luddite, and that he would stand no nonsense. We dined in the executive dining room on the 12^th floor after a hurried meeting with the D.G., no less. This is the man from the BBC, etc. etc. Well, I did meet John Birt once, for what it’s worth.

Because of my decision to keep the HMI rig, I pondered as to whether I half or fully corrected to tungsten. Did TRT have the correction gels? The answer was to bundle me into a car along with the rest of the sparks and exercise one of the staff cars by taking it to their ‘old’ Broadcasting centre, wherein resided their main (soon to be replaced) news studios. Down in the depths of the building, some three floors below ground level, I was shown into a dingy room which was full to the gunnels (whatever they are) with correction filters-ND, CTO, CTB, and a variety of colours. 

Roll after roll of ROSCO products were standing in the original wrapping, barely touched and suffering only from a surplus of dust. My relief was tangible. I made up a shopping list, and it was in the car faster than you could say Turkey.