Alasdair Lawrance
Watched Robert Plant and Alison Krauss [Glastonbury June 2022]: at 73 and 50, they and their band really show how it should be done to the younger generation. All style, skill and musicality, as well as being beyond cool.
Give it a try, it will improve your evening.
Roger Long
Jay Bellerose is a top drummer and the rockabilly band perfect for Alison and Robert. The twin fiddlers near perfect. Great balance, great Americana…
Macca on the other hand was all over the place and the sound balance unreliable.
Pat Heigham
Staying with friends near Glastonbury this weekend [25-26 June 2022], I wondered about the OB facilities, given that the Festival runs until this Sunday evening, and Wimbledon starts tomorrow, Monday [27 June]. Are there enough OB units to cover?
Alan Taylor
I’m pretty certain that the OB planners have thought of that and allocated trucks accordingly.
Apart from anything else, if you turned up at Wimbledon [on Monday] morning with a huge OB truck fresh from Glastonbury, I can’t imagine how you would be able to get it into the OB compound, let along rig everything in time for the opening matches.
Pat Heigham
One would hope so, Alan, but given the current ‘planning’ re: News, I wouldn’t risk a bet!
I remember that one year the weather delayed the men’s final until the Monday – problem was that the BBC MCR was required in Sweden, and as it was first into the ‘media centre’ garage, it was blocked in by all the other broadcasters!
It was so much more fun with the open-air compound – NBC used to organise their ‘village’ so well, but the Wimbledon powers-that-be demanded that it all be hidden away.
I was in the area, to go on a Cream Tea train run by the East Somerset Steam Railway – so avoided the Glastonbury area like the plague.
Alasdair Lawrance
Back in the day, the Grand National and the Boat Race were due to be on the same Saturday, and there were not enough colour cameras in the UK to do both.
I think in the end Aintree was moved, as the Thames, being tidal, the Boat Race couldn’t easily be re-scheduled.
Alan Taylor
There used to be a similar hectic period in November. Royal Albert Hall (RAH) Remembrance service on Saturday, Cenotaph on Sunday morning. Lord Mayor’s show on Saturday, every second year the Royal Variety Performance happened about a week later (alternating with ITV) and in the days when they used to still do it, Miss World happened about the same time too, I think it was at the RAH the week after Remembrance. Football and racing continued as normal. It often offered an opportunity to earn a bit of overtime for us OB chaps.
The Boat Race time and date is determined by the tides, but the date of Easter is also determined in part by the phase of the moon. Some years, the Boat Race and Easter would coincide. Many other big events happened over Easter too, which must have made life difficult for the scheduling people. I remember the Country & Western Festival from Wembley Pool happening every Easter, also the first Hickstead event of the year and Motor Racing. Just to liven things up a bit, they liked to have Eurovision around then as well. Maybe a live Easter broadcast from a cathedral would tie up loads of facilities at the same time, although some big Easter religious broadcasts were recorded a few days before.
Dave Plowman
Got a story about that. When the National and Boat Race were on the same day. Had my brother and young family staying with me (from Scotland) and they wanted to see the Boat Race live. I was working on “The Bill” at the time, and had just got a script called “Party Politics”. An omen. Not being a betting type, and before you could do everything online, I decided to find a betting shop between the station and Putney tow path. No such luck, so no bet. These days, you’d pass a betting shop every few yards on every high street.
[Ed: this is repeated in Betting Slips…]
Alasdair Lawrance
Hate to say it, but Diana Ross [at Glasto] is consistently flat, definitely not ‘on top’ of the note.
Such a shame after all the terrific Motown stuff she’s done.
Mike Giles
Yes Alasdair, but my grandchildren tell me I am flat too – I don’t think I am!
Alan Taylor
Just been watching Diana Ross on BBC1 and feeling a little disappointed. She doesn’t really [seem to] be performing the songs, just singing them … and not too brilliantly either. The crowd are obviously loving her, and she is loving the adulation, but she seems rather wooden.
I think it’s one of those things which works so much better if you’re actually there. However if I had been standing in the sun for a few hours waiting to see her performance, I’d be pretty miffed if the moment she walks onto stage, the girl in front of me climbed up on her boyfriend’s shoulders and completely blocked the already limited view of the stage I might otherwise have had.
Mike Giles
But would you now be capable of supporting your significant other half on your shoulders for that long Alan?
I could have done it once upon a time, but I think that we would both end up on the floor nowadays! I also wonder about those behind the beer tents (at least, I presume that’s what they are).
Alan Taylor
I don’t recall ever hoisting any adult onto my shoulders and have no intention of attempting to do so these days.
I’m not one for huge crowds either, so although there are many things which appeal to me about Glastonbury, the sheer scale of the event would put me off. Every summer they have an evening where local bands perform in Banbury marketplace, some of them are excellent. That’s a big enough crowd for me.
Covering football matches usually meant that by the time you finish the post-match interviews and derig, it’s about 90 mins after the end of the match. Still loads of congestion on roads, but the crowds on foot will have dissipated. I freelanced on a number of football club TV stations where it’s a permanent rig and you finish as soon as the commentator puts his microphone down. I never liked walking out to find myself in a massive crowd of people where you could scarcely move. Some of the people based at TVC have presumably found themselves caught up in the crowd emerging from QPR at one time or another.
Dave Newbitt
Working at TVC with QPR as near neighbours – that stirs a memory or two!
Arriving by car for work at TVC, first choice for parking was Frithville Gardens of course. Not often lucky so progressively on to investigate Stanlake Rd., Tunis Rd. and not uncommonly Loftus Road, the latter to be avoided on home match days. Not everyone in the crowds filing up and down Loftus Rd. was car friendly. I have seen lads attempting to run the length of the street without touching the tarmac – up the boot, along the roof, down the bonnet and on to the next car.
If it was an evening match and you had parked in Loftus in the morning, ‘twer well to remember to shift it elsewhere later in the day!
Roger Long
In 2002 Mr Eavis funded a 16 camera doco about Glastonbury.
I was there for 10 days camping behind the Pyramid in the green area. It was empty when I arrived: by the weekend tents were erected over my tent even though I had camped next to a genny.
Julian Temple was our director, most of the time I was left to my own devices, and ended up on the roof of sound control recording in MS. It was a fantastic vantage point, and I did see some great performances.
The nights were spent in Lost Vaugness and the Circus area, all very weird and requiring evening dress (and shorts!).
The tepee field and healing area were fascinating – especially the camera obscura tent, a brilliant image on a copper parabola with no noise…
Patrolling the new fence and filming the long drop latrines were compulsory and eye opening.
Nights were long, the world / jazz stage had showers and a canteen, the weather was ok. The green bar in the marquee was a hoot – no glasses just paper cups up to your knees at the end of the night.
The crowds were OK, very alt but not as intimidating as football!
I saw Roger Walters do “Animals” for the first time live (and in Quad PA), Rod Stewart with a great LA band, Rolf Harris on a Sunday morning to 40,000, Plant in a small marquee.
Lots of African jazz and plenty of quirk.
It isn’t about the music really: It is the vibe of that rolling valley and distant Tor. BBC coverage gives an element, just wish the pictures were more static, constant movement is tedious, I really want to see the performance in detail.
The sound is incredibly variable as are the bands I suppose.
Mike Jordan
Despite all the pro and con comments about this event, it was amazing how much coverage was done. Shame no accurate times as never quite sure who was on next or exactly when.
Just don’t think of the number of Radio Mics and channels, multicore boxes, cameras – and especially radiocams – production galleries, lights and controls, video projection systems and so on.
And of course let’s not forget how many super clever folks making it all work.
I know some of it wasn’t my BBC specialisation even in OBs, but mics appear integrated with all sorts of instruments (and people). Shows that there is hope for what we all did in years gone by.
It was amazing with some of those” swooping” camera shots across the audience – especially in the pyramid stage. I could see several camera hoists and peds but how on earth (or in the sky) were those swooping shots done? Lots of Handhelds on stage and very few in shot ever.
It wasn’t till late I discovered that there was a “how we did it” video on iPlayer and when I had managed to make mine work, discovered that it disappears offline tonight before I have had a good look at it. I know we are interested folks but why is iPlayer so full of old dubious stuff when this was only online for a while. And of course not possible to download and keep without considerable bodging?
Anyone got a copy saved? The way BBC does iPlayer nowadays, each show downloaded seems to consist of several thousand tiny files about 2seconds long and no way of putting them back together ever.
Nuff said – back to sleep and whingeing.
Alec Bray
That doco was, I think, for 2021, not this year (2022). How they did a sort of virtual Glasto. It’s expiring tonight (27 June 2022) as it is a year old.
I have captured the video of the virtual Glastonbury from iPlayer, if anyone would like a copy.
Mike Jordan
Thanks Alec regarding the video. I hadn’t watched it all: I actually watched the iPlayer version last night and hadn’t realised it was a show about the fake G last year! I bet they didn’t have to cope with quite so many tech bits as a full-size show. Nothing much of actual interest but I spotted the Arena mobile truck in one quick shot – ah! that is another story!
My other comments about the clever show are still very valid I feel!
I guess they leave the pyramid stage metalwork there over time. Probably far easier to get the canvas cover over it than the difficulty we had getting the roof over a double gazebo tent we had for our street party a while ago!
Alan Taylor
I would guess that the swooping shots were done with a Technocrane. I’ve seen them used on festivals I’ve worked at in recent years. It’s probably best to Google for images, but if you imagine a JimmyJib crossed with a Fisher Boom, with a bit of Simon hoist too, you’re in the right ballpark. It’s a telescopic camera boom which extends to ridiculous lengths.
As for the radio mics, digital systems squeeze huge quantities of devices onto a tiny RF spectrum. Apparently, there were about 100 stages happening. Obviously, most of them were small scale, but quite a few would have been using lots of radio mics and ridiculous amounts of radio communication simultaneously.
I was intrigued to spot some backing vocalists singing into two microphones at once. Decades ago, before microphone splitters were commonplace, you would often see the film crew’s microphone taped to the lead vocal microphone, but I’m at a loss to understand why anybody needs to sing into two microphones these days.
I thought some of the lighting effects were hugely spectacular. It must have been quite something to see it for real, although it might not be so good for any epileptics.
Much as I like the music, I wish there were more coverage of all the peripheral stuff going on at Glastonbury too. It was good to see a Glastonbury where the weather was reasonably kind. The crowds were clearly enjoying it and they made a big difference to the coverage.
If you look for satellite views of Worthy Farm, you can easily see the framework of the Pyramid stage. The last time I looked, the Apple Maps satellite view must have been taken shortly after a festival because the fields bore the scars of the festival.
Just out of interest, has anybody ever spotted OB scanners at any venue or event on satellite imagery? They show up very clearly at the various unit bases.
Graeme Wall
There appears to be a scanner and hoist parked up at Salisbury racecourse, a quick hunt round various Premier division football clubs doesn’t show anything.
Alan Taylor
Well spotted. I would guess that it’s a Racetech scanner and hoist vehicle. The colouring and shape are consistent with their fleet. You can see it in much more detail and zoom around it on Google Earth, but there are a lot of blurry bits in the image.
I’ve never worked at that racecourse, but there doesn’t seem to be any scaffold towers for cameras alongside the track, which I would have expected if a normal broadcast OB was imminent. I assume it’s before the racing as everywhere is pristine and the shadows are long. After the event, the scanner would normally drive back to base and there would be rubbish all over the public areas.
Meanwhile, back at Glasto, here’s the Google Earth shot of the Pyramid Stage taken in April 2020, when it was all fields round there.
…The only big event I’ve spotted actually in progress on Google Earth is what I assume to be the Goodwood Revival meeting which takes place in September. I might well have been working there on the day that pictures were taken, but I’ve long since deleted my call sheet and can’t remember exactly where the scanners parked. If I remember right, the main tech compound was in a wooded area, but I haven’t picked it out.
Those who go to motor racing events will have noticed that the team vehicles look very much like scanners. Normally it’s easy to pick out a huge scanner parked up at a venue, but at somewhere like Donnington Park, the scanners park amongst those vehicles. The first time I worked there, it took a while to find the trucks as the sketch map was wrong, which didn’t help.
Nick Ware
You can see the structure clearly on Google Earth.
Drag the street view icon onto the site and you will find a number of blue dots. Each dot is a 360 degree picture of events, inside the empty frame, etc.
No trucks to be seen at Wimbledon, but that might be because it usually rains when they are there!
However, there is a dot on the media roof where you can see a Sound bod wearing a Wimbledon shirt and in monkey-like pose! Does anybody recognise him? I’m guessing that was in the run-up to Wimbledon, because in that pic there are cables already in, and rain covers on the adjacent courts (13 and 14 if I remember right). Oh, and the roof of a truck just visible if you pan around.
Actually, further to that, if you click on the name Alessandro Mattiolo at bottom left, you’ll find he’s a DOP, and he has another pic presumably of his presenter, taken after dark, lit by the LED light panel that’s on the table in the first pic.
Note the sinister black rain clouds in the night picture!
Alan Taylor
My version of Google Earth shows the date of the Wimbledon imagery as April, which is far too soon for tech vehicles to be there. You wouldn’t see most of them anyway because the tech vehicles park in an underground parking area. Similar underground parking arrangements are found at some modern purpose-built football stadia.
[But] I was chatting with the guy who lives over the road, and he mentioned satellite imagery. I said that it seems odd that none of the huge OB trucks seem to have been seen on location. His reply was that I obviously have not talked to any Aston Villa supporters.
Sure enough, it looks to be a CTV scanner, together with what is probably a genny and a sat truck, together with coils of cables.
