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Turkish De-light 1999 contd.

page 5 of 7

Although I initially favoured half correction, I did change my mind to full correction to tungsten, perhaps because I really wasn’t sure how the senior engineer would cope with mixed colour temperature. Now, I had a meeting with the senior (racks) engineer, and a very respectable and smartly dressed gentleman he was. (It seemed to me that the majority of TRT staff wore suits and ties). Via Emir, we established that he wanted to know what lighting level I was going to light to. I had no hesitation in answering 800 lux. His raised eyebrows and Emirs carefully worded reply told me that that was not an expected response. Emir eventually translated the chief engineers response that the manufacturers specification of 2000 lux at F 5.6 or F8, and why wasn’t I lighting to that level. Dear Readers, you must work out for yourself what your reply would have been and how you would have communicated it to the senior engineer of a major Asian Broadcaster. Fortunately, I had the experience of much of the broadcasting world on my side, 2000 lux belonged to the early days of experimental image orthicon colour cameras at Lime Grove, as far as I was concerned. With the Hyperhad CCD cameras in use on this show, I had no hesitation in defending my decision. Having said that, I later found that TRT’s cameras in one of their Istanbul studios were 25mm plumbicons and did need 1500 lux.

I was continually being bombarded with questions and being asked what equipment I would need. I finally got everybody to accept that I needed to get away from the ‘action’ and plan what I was going to do next. Tarik Baykur provided me with some AutoCAD type floor plans to a scale of 1/100. I settled down in my room with my lighting stencil and colour swatch.

There was a circular ‘desk’ area where the presenters were largely based, about two thirds of the way up the floor space. Because of the singular lack of hanging points within the venue, key lights were inevitably shallow, and further away than I would like them. Whereas I could compromise many of the other lamp positions, I didn’t want to start with the keys. Some floor lamps would be possible, and after some head scratching, I had a plan that I felt would work, within the parameters that were not of my making.

“Emir”, I said with as much authority as I could muster, “it is essential that I have a hanging position for two 5K’s that is under that beam.” I said, pointing at one of the huge concrete beams that spanned the library about one third of the way up the room. Considerable discussion with various people followed by much pointing and gesticulation resulted in an acceptance that it might be possible. Unfortunately, the I.T. people had already built a data acquisition area underneath said beam, and they would need to be told to move all their servers and 21” monitors. I snatched a tea break rather than suffer their outpourings of angst.

The dimmers arrived and were duly installed on the balcony. At least I would be able to achieve some sort of light balance now. Well, not quite. When powered up there were immediately severe hum problems. On the procube wall, B.P. units, scanner output, everywhere.

Earth loops are truly international. Many man hours were spent in addressing the problem-which refused to go away. Plan B emerged. No dimmers. As I was using quite a few narrow angle par cans, this left me with a problem. I remembered the dungeon full of lighting gels. A car was dispatched. Problem gone away-ish. That took me to the end of Monday. Two full days left.

That evening, I dined in TRT’s own splendid restaurant, just a short walk from my quarters. The Turkish Minister for Education was dining with his family. To bed with a full stomach and a busy liver. In the middle of the night my dreams were broken by the quite unforgettable sound of a wolf. O.K., my only experience of a wolf’s cry was via some wild life programme or other, but then, I was somewhere in the middle of Asia so anything was possible. The following day, Emir told me that he did not think that a wolf would not be so close to the city. Not that it definitely wasn’t one! I resolved not to explore the grounds after dark.

Tuesday morning arrived, my key lights were not rigged, the power supply plagued by constant problems. Hum problem still present, now there was also the problem of overloading existing circuits. It seemed that the lighting power came from the same source as the computers. Every time our breakers tripped, umpteen P.C.’s lost power. Now  we all know how much they enjoy doing that!

Emir kept assuring me that problems would be solved “very soon”. I never actually got a definition for “very soon”, but tomorrow fitted in with the actuality. The really good news was that the roof windows had been successfully blacked out with ‘Ruberoit’ a sort of light weight roofing material. Now you know what to do when you’re on location and run out of black poly!