BBC unveils the new Studio B, modernised with a new design and with automation
Since June 2022, the brand new Studio B at BBC has been home to the show BBC News at Six and Ten. Read about the studio design process and launch in TVBEuropes interview with Chris Cook, BBC Project and Presentation Director, in this interview here (opens article in new window).
We congratulate the BBC team on launching a modernised flagship TV news studio.
Flexible design and automation
At the heart of their studio design, you find the electric.friends designer tower and robotic control system axisctrl.AC2. The axisctrl.AC2 is a complete system for running a professional robotic control system in broadcast production, with a GUI that provides functionality to run «shots» on camera robots. axisctrl.AC2 uses AI to guide robotics, such as pose-based camera movements and face tracking.
When deciding to bring Studio B back into service with a new design, BBC required, amongst others:
- To build a physical, not virtual, studio
- A studio designed for flexibility to be used for news and election
- Use automation and robotics to make the space more efficient
BBC saw the technology from electric.friends during a visit to Media City Bergen a few years ago, and Cook said this to TVBEurope:
“They’d built this sort of set within the middle of the newsroom with these amazing cameras that sped around the floor, and you could put chairs over the tracks, you could walk over them”.
See the set in Media City Bergen:
To learn more about the set in Media City Bergen, go here (2017 press release announcing the new studio at TV 2 Norway).
A physical studio with multiple cameras on one track, designed for safety and flexibility
Chris Cook said to TVBEurope:
“With the Furios that are currently in Studio E, BBC health and safety requires very, very clear demarcation that you can’t walk over them. They are massive trip hazards. electric.friends is literally like a tram line, so you can walk over it, it’s very safe. They also are very clever with their cable management system, it’s single fibre that rolls up inside the tower. electric.friends is used on a number of Scandinavian television stations, and they’ve done a lot of development work with us because we wanted through-the-lens autocue hoods on the cameras. Our talent doesn’t like reading to a below lens autocue, which is what their solution was up to that point. So they did some development work to put the new Epic Autocue monitors on the cameras.”
Read the full interview with BBC here (opens TVBEurope article in new window)
tower.W2.PX is a designer tower with a full-size see-through prompter/monitor.
The electric.friends robotic control system axisctrl.AC2 offers advanced shot properties with features such as path planning with keyframes and innovating AI for face tracking, pose estimation and personalised frames.
Contact us
We are ready to assist you with your set designs and plans for using robotics and automation, with flush floor rails, cable-free sets, AR/VR tracking, and with software-based robotics control systems. Contact us to set up a meeting.
Learn more about the electric.friends all-in-one robotics solution here.
Learn more about the electric.friends robotics controls system, axisctrl.AC2, here.
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