Bermingham, who spent over 20 years providing training in television lighting at the BBC and is the author of several books on technical TV production, worked closely with David J. Fairweather, CBS' director of operations for Europe to ensure the new studio was capable of meeting all the needs of a live 24-hour television news service. After initial discussions, Bermingham specified an ETC SmartFade compact lighting console to be at the heart of the new lighting system: "Prior to CBS I would specify a different desk, but the chief engineer said, 'Look Alan, the footprint is too big'. At the same time, the SmartFade came out and Mark White from ETC very kindly came down to Plymouth, where I live, and left one of the SmartFades with me for a couple of weeks."
After spending some time getting to know the SmartFade, Bermingham was delighted with the desk and the way in which it operated: "It's a brilliant concept and it's so easy to operate and gives you all the facilities you want. I don't want to sound like an advert here, but from now on I will use the SmartFade - and have done, in fact."
ETC's Mark White says: "One of its biggest advantages is that you can perform a live edit of a memory - something that most small desks can't do. Once the cue is recorded, you press the edit memory button to display all the channels of that memory. You can then edit the cue from the desk's faders and save the update by pressing the memory button.
A television news studio has to keep on top of ever-changing current events, so the versatility of the SmartFade is ideal."
In addition to the ETC desk, Bermingham also specified the company's PowerBar system to provide an integrated dimming and rigging solution. As with most entertainment environments it is essential that dimmers do not create electrical interference or noise, and this is where the PowerBars came into their own.
CBS, as with many other studios that Bermingham has worked on, has a mixture of high frequency fluorescent, HMI, CDM and tungsten-based luminaries. Dimmer rooms can be financially, and often physically, restrictive, making distributed dimming the way to go: "It is quite useful in a small studio to consider having distributed dimming. The thing about the high frequency fluorescent lighting is that they have integral dimming. They will respond to mains dimming, where they will respond to the dimmed waveform from a normal thyristor dimmer, but that is a bit wasteful because you have a dimmer dimming a dimmer! So, the only thing you need to dim in the studio is the tungsten lights. We had a need for a few tungsten channels at CBS, so the dimmer bars are excellent. We can put in feeds of 32A outlets dotted around the studio, normally a few more than you think you might need initially to allow for expansion or giving the option to move the bars to wherever you want them. So, it simplifies the mains, keeps the cost down and means you don't need a separate dimmer room," says Bermingham.
Bermingham also specified three ETC Source Fours after evaluating the lanterns against other manufacturers' equipment, and has specified them at other studios since, including Meridian in Southampton, where fixed focus was the order of the day: "I simply wanted to light a small header - a piece that ran around the rest of the set, but it had to be lit in isolation. So, I had about four or five of those focused at about 50° wide angle, a nice bit of Hamburg Frost to smooth them out - that kind of techniqu
