In December 2005 I was invited to Sigma TV whose
headquarters are in Nicosia, Cyprus. I am fortunate to have visited Cyprus a
number of times in the last twenty years or so, and it was once again a
pleasure to be 'back'. My mission was to carry out some on station
instruction for the four lighting people who were on staff at Sigma TV.
Peter Zantides is the senior engineer at Sigma and had been instrumental in
enabling me to be there in the first place.
Sigma
has a busy medium sized studio in their main building which alternated
between sport, current affairs programmes and pop culture between news
broadcasts. There is also a separate pair of studios which serve for the
ongoing popular 'soap' programme and the Greek/Cypriot version of 'Family
Fortunes' that also puts Sigma at the top of the TV polls in Cyprus.
Everyone is busy, busy, busy and I had to get right on in
there to keep up with what was going on. Carlos is the charismatic L.D. part
Spanish, part Cuban and studied TV in Moscow. Wow, that makes him fluent in
four languages. I can barely master one!
Day one, and I check out the 'Family Fortunes' studio. A
British L.D. came out to supervise the rig which clearly had to be similar
to the U.K. branded version.
Carlos was in charge.
The studios were bathed in nice warm
sunshine: 23 degrees. What a bonus for December.
Carlos proudly showing me his dimmer racks.
The drama studio in houselights...
...and in TV darkness.
To my European eye, there are too few lamps
and mostly too high.
Certainly outside the set windows, I would have wanted
much more kit to give a realistic look.
However, I do appreciate that there are many different
lighting styles and ways of achieving them.
Much more ground row lamps and some pointing
the other way would make a large difference to the look of this set.
One light over a window wall is not enough to create a
believable daylight scene.
Later, I was shown the small News/Sport studio back in
the main building.
The back light is clearly in the right place.
Three fingers means three catch lights in the eyes; I
wasn't entirely happy with that. One/two is a maximum for me.
Outside, a nice December sky.
This was the son of the cleaner working at
the Drama studio complex.
Carlos standing in at a lit position for me.
Mac lights providing the background moving
lights.
