I looked at OBS, and my initial reaction was that -- as someone who's spent 20 years behind a
switcher -- it was going to drive me batcrap.
If you've been that long in a dark room staring at the world through monitors, I've got a story for you that you'll have special insight into.
A
theatre where I played assistant head LX and assistant head of sound for a number of years had a particularly spacious and airy
lobby with lots of glass. The local TV station had three mobiles, two that carried five studio cameras and crew and a smaller rig with about three. The largest mobile carried five cameras but had inputs for at least 8 and was popular for large sporting events. The station had a 90 minute lunch hour program that routinely went live to air five days a week Monday to Friday. Normally they worked out of one of their studios. Several times a year they'd take over one
level of our
lobby for a number of days. Sometimes they'd be airing recorded shows and recording new show segments to tape. Sometimes they'd go live to air from our
lobby and sometimes they'd go live to tape. The show's host was always the same but the mobile and crew would vary depending upon which of the two larger mobiles they had available. Their largest mobile was a real money maker for them and was often rented out to Canada's second largest
network. Both the larger mobiles had particularly attractive female PA's but the one lady had a severe chest shadow problem and usually wore particularly short skirts. Often they'd
send over an equipment truck a day early and several of us would spend hours taping rolls of
neutral density gel to floor to ceiling windows if they were going to appear in any shots. One time the mobile with the well endowed PA was on tap and the mobile was ensconced in a bus '
drop off lane' outside where they'd parked it, with proper permits, in the middle of the night before. They were shooting a segment that was to
roll live to tape
in one non stop sequence save for commercial breaks. They had the typical three camera shot for the host, guest and immediate area with two other cameras located further across the
lobby for cut-aways to any larger acts, jugglers, rock groups what have you. At one
point they were shooting a segment where the host was interviewing an animal trainer who'd brought a number of docile animals along for the day. While they were chatting and holding a
snake or small tame reptile on camera, there was a tame male chimpanzee seated on a stool behind the camera
line waiting patiently for his segment to be shot sometime after the next commercial break. Suitably off camera was the over endowed PA with her stilettos off to avoid noise and her extremely short
skirt. Seated on his stool was the chimp staring at the voluptuous PA and jerking himself off to
beat the band. Well the host was first to notice but was doing his best not to look or crack up. Some of us IA types were next and doing our best not to splatter uncontrolably. Slowly other crew in the
lobby were noticing and looking / pointing at each other. The guest hadn't noticed yet but eventually one of the three main camera operators got wind of it and tells his mates to catch a peek when they're not live. Now whichever camera's aren't live on the
switcher at the moment are beginning to jiggle slightly. Next the entire crew out in the mobile are wondering why cameras that aren't live are shaking subtly. Finally, to answer the mobile's queries, one of the three main cameras that wasn't live spun around and sent a tight shot of the 'action' out to the mobile and that was it. The director and crew in the mobile were in stitches. Everybody cracked up and it was time to stop tape and grab a coffee. You can just imagine sitting in a dark mobile, manning your GVG with your only view of the set coming through the lenses of five cameras and wondering what the heck is going on.
All the best
@Jay Ashworth
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.
