Gaming World Forums
General Category => General Talk => Topic started by: Zatham on April 22, 2008, 05:51:43 am
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Has anyone ever worked in a TV station or been a part of a tour of one?
I need to get a good idea of what kind of rooms a TV station has for my............. game.
Ironically two friends of mine have worked in TV Stations but I can't be like "Can you tell me what's in the station? I need to know because I'm making a role playing game where you save the world lol."
Here is what I have so far:
News Desk, marketing department (cubicles), editing suites, audio studios, tape library, creative department (? what's in here) and green screen, dressing rooms...
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bathrooms
clearly marked fire escapes
fire extinguisher
doors
vending machines
appropriate lighting fixtures
computers
filing cabinets
1 negro
1 handicapped
cameras
microphones
reporters
telephones
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The creative department isn't an actual department. Editing/ animating/ audio/ etc falls under this.
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seriously though i was in one years ago and it's really what you'd expect. things like this are always a lot less complex than you'd expect them to be.
it's just worth noting that you will need lots of computer labs. it was a long time ago that i was in a tv station and i doubt they even have editing stations anymore, just lots of computer labs. creative departments are never anything more than a computer lab. apart from equipment storage and the actual set, it really shouldn't look that dramatically different from any other office.
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Play Call of Duty 4, there's a TV station in the 2nd level of that.
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I think you should disregard everything that's been said here and go on an Rm2k field trip.
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Oh, I guess this is my thing, isn't it?
K, so the TV station I intern in and have class at is an unaffiliated station (so it is both poor and not linked to things like CBS, NBC and etc) and is on the first floor of a university building, so it's totally smaller than most.
Here's what we got:
There's a front desk/reception area, which is also used for the public radio station in the same building (but not the student radio station, which is on the second floor).
The news room is in it's own little section, it has a tiny cubicle-filled room to the side, which is where our news team gets crackin on work. Then there's the news studio, which... looks like a news studio. I don't really know how to explain it. You have the set (desk, green screen, etc), camera equipment (since it's the news, they don't have microphone booms, we use lapel microphones), lights, teleprompters, etc. I'll be honest, it's hard to remember what all goes into this sort of thing when you actually have to sit down and think about it plus I'm in the sales/promotion department so I don't spend a lot of time working in the studio. The "dressing" room consists of the closest public restroom (but it has a full length mirror) and a rack of blazers/suit jackets in the news room.
Then there's control rooms, which look a little bit like this. Our's look exactly like this:
(http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b291/ichigofrost/controlroom.jpg)
CHECK OUT THAT STATE OF THE ART EQUIPMENT :woop:
We have 2 or three larger studios in the building that we whore out to other production teams so they can film their shows there. If you've ever watched a movie or TV show where someone was recording a song, that's pretty much what it looks like, except the room they're in is much larger and there are cameras and other material.
There's the General Manager's office... Sales and Promotion generally work in the same cubicle-filled area because we have no money to put them in different areas, plus since we can't actually afford to pay real people there's like 5 of them total.
There's an editing room, it's really just computers though. I'm not sure if this is the case for most offices, but since so many of the rooms are soundproof, there are large glass windows where you can see into the rooms/out into the halls.
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This is all very helpful, thank you everyone.
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bathrooms
clearly marked fire escapes
fire extinguisher
doors
vending machines
appropriate lighting fixtures
computers
filing cabinets
1 negro
1 handicapped
cameras
microphones
reporters
telephones
you forgot the mexican janitor and the peppy white unpayed college intern that happily serves everyone donuts.
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Check out the game cRaZy_GuY's Journey, it has a pretty neat TV Station.
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Most TV stations keep closets full of TVs, by the way. Beyond that, I guess it's just a lot of control panels. Hope this helps.
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you forgot the mexican janitor
oh yeah. i forget about them!
you must remember that if the game takes place AT NIGHT the place will be swarming with poor mexican folks emptying garbage cans and accidentally throwing away incredibly important materials
and the peppy white unpayed college intern that happily serves everyone donuts
fffffffffffffff i hate that fucking guy >
what the fuck does he have to be happy about
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what the fuck does he have to be happy about
He believes in "social networking" so he's super nice to everyone but doesn't realize that interns are basically guinea pigs for the amusement of the entire studio.
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I'm Lebanese. :sad:
Also our station has a lot of interns because it can't afford to actually pay a staff. The interns greatly outnumber the people on the payroll. But yeah HAHA stupid interns getting work experience in their field! What a bunch of schmucks.
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Not to mention how it's required to graduate.
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Some of you may be familiar with G4 television. Well, before G4 was G4, they were known as G4/TechTV. Before that, they were ZDTV. When they were ZDTV, they had interesting, smart, personal programming and I enjoyed watching it. When they switched to TechTV, they were still pretty good channel to watch, though they started to show signs of over commercialization and reruns of Max Headroom. Once G4 took over, the whole studio moved from San Francisco to LA. All the good programming got replaced with ATTACK OF THE SHOW and reruns of Star Trek Voyager, and the majority of the talent left the station.
In the TechTV period, I had the opportunity to be a member of the studio audience for a show called The Screensavers, with Leo Laporte and Patrick Norton, mainly because I lived in San Francisco at the time and had a bit of free time. The episode was about gas powered, remote control tanks, or something.
The first thing I noticed is the clever design of the set. It's put together in such a way that it actually looks much larger on screen than it does in real life. Beyond that was a mass of high-traffic carpeting, folding chair storage, and a nice lobby complete with vending machines and sofas.
I arrived early. A mexican janitor (No joke.) escorted me to a kind of meeting room, where he turned on the TV and tuned it to TechTV. He said "Enjoy... TechTV." and left. I sat around for a while, when a few interns arrived with doughnuts. We exchanged a few words of light conversation until the rest of the studio audience arrived.
I was embarrassed to even been seen with the rest of the audience. These were the most unwashed, loudest, most annoying bunch of fanatical jerks you'll ever meet. When Sumi Das walked by after the show (The channel's old news anchor.), every tongue flopped out in her direction. One man shouted "SUMI!!! HEY SUMI DAS! I LOVE YOU!" To which he was greeted with a nervous smile and an increased pace of walk.
The whole thing was an interesting experience, to say the least.
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Yes, ZDTV was a godly channel but rather than renew the networking contract they let themselves get bought out. G4 is a huge pile of marketing shit. Xplay is the only decent show worth watching and even then the skits are more interesting than the actual dumb reviews.
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well, it's not quite what you are talking about, but i work in a tv station every day. it's my school's morning announcements. :] it's very professional though. the setup in the WPBC room (where we film and broadcast live across the school and record DVDs to send to the educational programming channel) is like this: there's lots of computers. it's all computers and switchboards and dvd players and other things like that. lots of technology.
there's 3 televisions just for the assistant director, who cues up videos, previews videos on each screen during the show, and generally just makes sure the anchors look nice.
the director has several televisions and a switchboard where he controls what is going on. he can preview a camera shot on one screen while another is being broadcasted. then he uses the auto-take button to switch over to the previewed shot. the director is the one completely in charge.
the sound board looks like this (http://www.majesticsound.ca/Soundcraft_board.jpg). it's operated by someone who wears big headphones tilted on their head so they can play things in one ear and always have another ear open to hear the director. they control everything that someone hears on the show. and of course, depending on how big the station is, soundboards can be pretty big and complex, and require very talented people to operate them.
the titler computer creates a powerpoint with all the graphics needed for announcements, weather, etc... using a small machine mounted to the top of their computer, they control what shows up on top of the show.
oh, also. there's even televisions in the back. this is so the anchors or people on the stage can see themselves when looking straight ahead. that way, they can make sure they look good. :D this is even included in most professional studios, which i've been to.
but yeah, there's all sorts of jobs, with plenty of televisions, machines, and computers all around.
i've been in professional news studios before too. they're very much the same, actually. last time i was in one was for the regional Michigan spelling bee, in which i was a contestant (i got 2nd place, so i didn't end up going to Washington DC for the national competition :< ). one thing to notice is that the studio isn't as big as it seems on tv. this is how the one i was in was set up for the spelling bee:
(https://legacy.gamingw.net/etc/img.photobucket.com/albums/v723/mkkmypet/tvstudio.webp)
there were lots of cameras and some televisions and a curtain covering the control studio in the back. there was a podium right in front of the stage, but the way they filmed it (with the upper-left-most camera) made it look like it was far away, and they just managed to steer clear of it with the way the other cameras were positioned. there's lots of tricks to that. that's how it is in the actual room where they filmed it, which can be set up all sorts of ways depending on the show and what you're filming. and if you're filming something like a sitcom or movie, it's much different, where there is no studio audience and there's equipment set up right in front of cut-out houses or scenes.
but yeah, hope that helped, i guess. and remember, google is your friend. i'm sure you can find some images of these things if you google them.