A Proms innovation, or a load of…?
New concert-hall camera techniques come at the expense of quality – and more gimmicks are on the way
Andrew Everard 1:12pm GMT 26th July 2010
Q-Ball: keeping an eye on the Proms
Had an email the other day from acclaimed recording engineer Tony Faulkner, drawing my attention to the camerawork and image quality on the BBC's coverage of last Wednesday's Prom 6, in which Paul Lewis began his cycle of Beethoven's piano concertos.
As Tony said, the picture quality as broadcast on Friday evening on BBC 4 was less than fabulous – 'through the bathroom window' is how he described it – and the coverage full of strange close-ups, often shot with wide-angle lenses giving what I saw as a strange 'hall of mirrors' effect. Notable by their absence were crisp shots, and any sense of an audience perspective.
The reason? It seems for this Prom the BBC had decided to do away with conventional cameras, and camera operators in the hall, and instead populate the platform with what can only be described as a load of balls.
Or rather a load of Q-Balls: remote-controlled cameras looking like upsized webcams, driven from behind the scenes. They're widely used in covering events such as sports, where they can be placed in locations beyond normal cameras – you may have seen such cameras in action covering the goals at the World Cup from a 'back of the net' perspective.
It's part of what the BBC sees as a mission to 'bring more drama and access to the broadcasts', according to interviews with the team behind the idea on The Arts Desk website. It's been experimenting with using the remote cameras alongside conventional broadcast hardware on some of the Proms, but decided to cover the Beethoven programme with 15 Q-Balls, and no conventional cameras.
Trouble is, the cameras offer lower picture quality, so director Jonathan Haswell simply got round the obvious switches between HD conventional cameras and Q-Balls by ditching the big cameras. Oh, and avoiding any wide-shots of the whole platform because, Haswell told The Arts Desk, they would 'frankly look sh*te.'
He explains that 'Whenever a new format comes in it develops its own style. A viewer can look at a high definition picture for a long time because it gives you so much detail to explore. When you have a low grade picture you'll get bored with looking at it unless there's real action and content within the frame, and you'll notice the poor quality.'
Hence the coverage of Prom 6, which was all odd angles and close-ups – sorry, real action and content – after the camera technology had been introduced to the viewer with almost gleeful enthusiasm in the prologue to the broadcast.
What's more, go to the Proms website for the concert and you can view the coverage in MaestroCam or Piano SoloCam (or SoloCom – the title seems to vary from page to page).
Oh, and if you're watching the Proms coverage on digital TV, you can use the 'Red Button' service on selected transmissions to view what the BBC calls 'MaestroCam - Full Frontal'. Your next chance will be to see Esa-Pekka Salonen full frontal on August 20.
It's all part of a plan to 'turn the concerts into real stories for television', the BBC's new Commissioning Editor for Music & Events, Jan Younghusband, told The Arts Desk. And she makes it clear Q-Balls are just the cue (sorry) for more innovative camera technology.
Apparently they're going to use a camera on a Furio Dolly for a Prom later in the season – that one's also remote-controlled and runs along a track, like touchline cameras and those used for keeping pace with athletes.
And Younghusband is also keen on the Spidercam system, of the kind 'flown' over football and rugby pitches, although astronomical daily hire rates may put the mockers on that one. Instead, she's looking at a miniature camera able to be slung from a rod as a budget alternative.
So far, no mention has been made of fitting performers with head-mounted cameras, or indeed attaching tiny devices on the end of bows, even though rock music directors occasionally flirt with cameras on the machine-heads of guitars. Perhaps I shouldn't give the BBC people any more ideas…
Having experienced Q-Balls, MaestroCam and Solo PianoCam for myself, I'm not sure I'm at all sold on the thrill-ride school of TV music coverage, and the step back from higher picture quality in favour of endless jumpy close-ups and a picture quality more akin to that coming from the onboard camera on an F1 car.
It came as quite a relief to go back to the calm, measured coverage on one of Japanese broadcaster NHK's excellent Blu-ray discs, about which I have written in the past.
On balance, I think I'd rather enjoy the music, and not be told a story.
Comments
Andrew, this is my first post on the Gramophone forum.
I live in Canada, but must really chuckle and wonder HOW the Proms organizers can POSSIBLY expect to get broadcast quality from what basically looks like a webcam.
Back in '93 I had a trip to England and managed to see a Proms concert live on BBC. It was truly an amazing experience. One could actually feel like you could put your hand through the tv and touch someone in the audience, unlike our pathetic NTSC broadcast system.
As far as I'm concerned, this is a step backwards and wanting to cut back on NOT having proper camera crew.
Now from what I understand, the Last Night of the Proms was televised world wide in theatres last year. I can only imagine what would happen if the Proms went this way on such a broadcast.
Ah yes, technology!!
I, too, was unimpressed with the employment of the Q-ball cameras for this Prom concert. The picture definition was poor. I might be accepting of their use if this were sparing rather than exclusive, and if the sound balance changed to match the cameras' close-up positions; perhaps a different sound mix could be transmitted as an option accessed via the red button facility.
Don't you think digital technology and its uses are getting out of control? The poor old consumer is in danger of falling farther and farther behind. Let's be given a helping hand to catch up, keep up, or whatever, with some useful guidance here and there on the basics first.
Despite owning expensive domestic equipment no more than two years old, I'm still trying to get the best out of straightforward coverage of concerts, etc, but, for example, have been unable to find a way to delay the surround sound audio signal (from my HD cable TV decoder) sufficiently such that the sound output (via my hi-fi surround set-up) is in sync with the HD video output (seen on my HDTV). Expensive HDMI leads made no difference. (I have no such problems when playing BluRay discs).
Mr Greenham,
Provided you are sending the signal from your TV box to the surround system in digital form, you can buy a delay unit such as the Felston DD740, to sit between the two and give you remote control of the delay, so you can 'slide' the sound step by step until it's in synch with the picture.
The solution isn't exactly cheap, at around £200, but it would be more than justified in a system such as yours. More information here, or you can buy the unit from sites such as this.
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge like this. I had heard of a unit something like this but I thought I would need one for each digital input! In any event, because my kit was less than 2 years old and not exactly cheap (eg the Yamaha surround receiver alone was about £1,700), with expensive HDMI and other digital interconnects, etc, I thought the solution had to lie with me eventually mastering the rather baffling setting-up procedures within which, somewhere, the audio signal could be delayed. In addition, I thought it must be possible to delay the digital audio from within the cable box, but evidently not.
I am very grateful to you, and am going to order one of these units immediately.
Getting back to the subject in hand.... It seems to me that one of the issues is marketing speak. What on earth does "bring more drama and access to the broadcasts" really mean? A true candidate for pseuds corner. If you want drama and access - isn't the music enough?
We know classical music audiences are diminishing, and we do need to find a way to ecourage larger audiences, but giving it to marketing won't solve the problem.
My point exactly, h_d...
Not sure if someone has mentioned this elsewhere, but this seems like a suitable thread. I've been really irritated by the intrusive camera which is now placed behind the Proms stage to catch performers and conductors when they have left the stage. I think this is such an intrusion on what ought to be a few private moments for them out of the limelight before they head back onstage. I think this is cheap and nasty emotional voyeurism. It can't possibly tell us anything that we either need or have a right to know. It also is an example of the vulgar idea that the performer behind-the-scenes is somehow more 'real' than the performer in action.
Don’t know why Andrew’s getting all aerated about a few extra cameras. Personally, I’d welcome them. Might clear up one or two long-standing operatic questionmarks. I mean, were Pelleas and Melisande really just good friends, hanging around that castle with nothing much to do except play with each other’s hair? And what exactly was going on between Tristan and Isolde when Mark breezed in? I’m just not ready to buy this "honour" deal that Tristan keeps spouting. As for Siegfried-alias-Gunther and that bit about spending the night with Notung between him and Brunnhilde, pulleeeaase. It’s not as if he hadn’t already shown he kind of fancied the girl.
Then there's Mrs. Barak. Hubby’s out there dyeing while she’s at home dying to have kids. Last time I checked, there’s only one way to do that and there’s Barak’s hunky brothers hanging around the place not to mention that Walking Groin character the Nurse and Empress wheel in to get her to cough up the shadow. Are we sure she’s Mrs. Goody Two Shoes from first note to last? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not pointing fingers but you know what they say about dyer’s wives and hey, what’s wrong with a few extra cameras dotted around to settle it once and for all? Come on, Andrew, don’t be so stuffy! A little News of the World meets Covent Garden might be just the thing for the box office.
Hate to puncture your bubble, but my argument wasn't with the number of cameras employed, but the fact that only lower-quality cameras were being used.