A room built for pictures
The first television studios were improvised. At Alexandra Palace in London, the BBC set up its studios in part of a Victorian building when it launched its service in 1936, and the American networks adapted theaters, radio studios and warehouses in the 1930s and 1940s. The requirements were different from film or radio: a television studio needs enough space for sets, cameras that can move, and heavy lighting, plus a place for the crew to see the output and manage the signal.
Early studios were small. A few sets were arranged around the room, cameras were wheeled between them, and performers moved quickly from one set to another during a live program. Careful planning was required, because there was no chance to repeat a scene.
Cameras and movement
A studio camera of the early period was a large machine. The iconoscope and image orthicon cameras were bulky and heavy, and each sat on a mobile mount. Operators wheeled them across the floor, adjusted the focus by hand, and followed the action. Early cameras often had a turret holding several lenses of different focal lengths, so the operator could switch between wide and close shots by rotating it. Zoom lenses became common in the 1950s and 1960s and gave operators more flexibility.
A pedestal mount, with a column that raises and lowers the camera smoothly, and a crane or boom for sweeping movements, became standard equipment. Cables ran across the floor to the control room, and crew members, called floor managers or stage managers, directed the performers and passed signals from the director.
Lighting
Lighting was a particular challenge. Early cameras needed a lot of light, and studios became hot as a result. Performers sometimes complained of heat and glare, and the lights consumed much electricity. The cameras were less sensitive than the human eye, so the lighting had to be bright and even, and artistic effects were limited. As tubes became more sensitive, the required levels fell, but color cameras in the 1950s and 1960s again raised the need for strong, well-balanced light because their three tubes captured less light each.
Studio lighting evolved from simple floodlights to more flexible arrangements with spotlights mounted on a grid overhead, controlled from a dimmer board. Techniques borrowed from theater and film, such as key, fill and back lights, were adapted. Over time, lights became more efficient, and lighting based on light emitting diodes later reduced heat and power use. The history of electric lighting in general, from incandescent to fluorescent to LED, is reflected in these rooms.
The control room
A television studio is a pair of spaces: the floor, where the action happens, and the control room, where the output is created. In the control room, a director sits in front of a bank of monitors, each showing a camera or other source. A vision mixer or technical director operates a switcher, pushing buttons to select which camera or source goes to air, or to blend between them. The director calls the shots, such as “ready camera two, take two”, and the vision mixer executes the cuts.
Other staff include:
- sound operators, who mix microphones, music and effects;
- engineers, who adjust camera settings so colors and brightness match;
- graphics operators, who prepare titles and captions;
- a producer or production assistant, who keeps time and tracks the running order; and
- talkback links, which let the director speak to camera operators and the floor manager through headsets.
Because the output was live, everyone worked to a script and a timing sheet. A mistake was seen by the audience immediately, which is a reason many people recall early television as tense for the crews.
Film-style multi-camera production
The multi-camera method was a particular innovation for scripted comedy. The American sitcom “I Love Lucy”, which began in 1951, was filmed on 35mm film with several cameras in front of a studio audience. The method, associated with the producers and technical team including Desi Arnaz and cinematographer Karl Freund, according to most accounts, gave the efficiency of a live performance with the permanence of film. Many later comedies followed a similar approach, and the style continued with videotape. Sets were built with three walls, leaving the fourth open for the cameras and the audience.
Tape, effects and digital tools
Videotape, which records on magnetic tape, changed studio operation in the mid-1950s, because programs could be recorded and edited, and mistakes could be fixed. Electronic editing followed. In the 1960s and 1970s, studio equipment gained more electronic effects, including wipes, keying and character generators for text. A key technique is chroma key, in which a subject stands in front of a plain blue or green background that is replaced electronically with another picture, as in weather forecasts.
Digital equipment appeared gradually from the 1980s. Cameras with solid-state sensors, digital switchers, computer graphics and automated systems reduced the size of crews in some studios. Some modern studios use large LED walls and virtual sets, which render a background in real time, in place of physical scenery. The basic arrangement, with cameras on the floor and a director in a room watching monitors, remains recognizable from the early days.
Studios and the shape of programs
The design of studios shaped what could be broadcast. Limited space favored talk shows, news, variety and drama set in a few rooms. Larger spaces allowed game shows with big sets and audiences, and bigger productions. Studio production also determines costs: a program shot in a studio is easier to control than one on location. That has made the studio the center of television production for most of the medium’s life, even as location shooting and remote production have grown.