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February 28th 2008 -Ìý John Smith - Outside Broadcast Director, programme transmission.

With less than a week to go the cable rig has begun. Our first outside Broadcast vehicle arrived at the NEC and as you would expect we know it by its TLA.

John Smith

It is the TSV – the Technical Service Vehicle – with the miles of cables required to connect our outside broadcast vehicles, based in the OB compound adjacent to the NEC pavilion, with our cameras, monitors and microphones in The Arena, Hall 1 and Hall 3.

Over the next few days, cables will be laid across the roof and under the floor, with care being taken to ensure that the correct number of camera, vision and audio cables end up at the correct locations. Once the acres of carpet are laid around the NEC, it will be much too late to change anything under the floor, but Unit Manager James Bonnar and his team of rigging superheroes will ensure that everything is as it should be.

The occasional cup of tea or coffee will help to lubricate the team and for an event of this scale, the cable rig will take at least 3 days to complete - Thursday, Friday and Monday - before the remaining Outside Broadcast vehicles arrive on site on Monday to be parked up according to the carefully prepared parking plan. We have every confidence that they will all fit into the space. Aren’t we James?

´óÏó´«Ã½ Crufts OB truck plan detail

They will be powered up, switched on and connected to the carefully pre-labelled cable ends and everything will work beautifully. Won’t it James?

The lighting rig begins on Sunday with Lighting Director Nigel Catmur starting off in the uncharted territory of our new area in Hall 3. Nigel and his team will build the lighting truss within the area whilst Production Designer Paul Sudlow and his team will supervise the start of the build of our Main Studio in Hall 3. The full technical team will be on site from Tuesday onwards and we will give all facilities a full check on Wednesday afternoon, ready for the show opening on Thursday morning.
There’s a lot to be done.

Paul & Nigel (technical team)

Meanwhile back at base, the programme scripts, running orders and schedules are taking their finalÌý shape and the chocolate biscuit supplies are taking a severe pounding in the edit suites as all the films shot in advance of Crufts are being edited. The production office appears to be in a frenzy of activity, but underneath it all, everything is calm and controlled although the conversations are getting shorter and more focussed as the days pass.

There’s no going back now, our programmes are detailed in all the listing magazines and we are all looking forward to gathering at the NEC next week for the culmination of weeks of preparation.

It will be busy, but it will all be worthwhile when we bring the excitement of this fantastic event onto a TV near you on Thursday night. Don’t worry about it James, we will be ready and it will be more than fine.
Won’t it?

February 22nd 2008 - Victoria Simpson, Assistant Producer - filming Ìý‘Friends for Life’

Ahoy from the Friends for Life road show…

Victoria

This week the light coloured coat and I travelled our furthest yet.Ìý As you are well aware by now dear reader, I can’t tell you in which direction we travelled, but I can tell you we travelled by plane! Well I say plane but my little brother has bigger Tonka toys!Ìý I could only count 19 windows and that included the pilot’s windscreen!Ìý If I squinted my eyes and hummed Goldfinger I could almost believe I was on a James Bond jet but then we took off… I have never followed that safety briefing so carefully in my life!

You’ll be relieved to know we landed safe and sound and filming was a great success.Ìý Another beautiful dog, great location, lovely contributors and a heart warming story - even the weather gods once again smiled kindly.Ìý What more could a director ask for?Ìý And just to prove I haven’t made up these tales, this week I’ve included a picture of me and the light coloured coat on location!Ìý Look out for that tractor coming to a television screen near you soon!

That was the last film to shoot for Friends for Life so the road show comes to a close and the really hard work starts in the edit.Ìý I understand my colleague has already explained what a chore that is!Ìý But I’ll do my best to let you know how it’s all going.Ìý It’s only a slight exaggeration to say I’ve a million versions to make for TX, online and the event itself.ÌýSo there’s no excuse wherever you’re watching Crufts not to vote for the dog you think is most deserving of the title Friends For Life!Ìý Remember to stay tuned for those all important numbers and get dialling!

Anyway best get back to my edit, I hear there’s a rush on the Kit-Kats!

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