Remember Jim Carrey’s 1998 film The Truman Show? We asked our young OB Supervisor/tech guru Ben Blasina what he would do if a client commissioned Gearhouse Broadcast to provide facilities for The Truman Show:
“Discreetly capturing Truman’s town of Seahaven from every angle is a challenge. Remotely controlled HD point-of-view cameras would be utilised extensively, like the Camera Corps Q-Ball, Sony BRC-700 and Toshiba IK-HD1H. For tiny hidden cameras like the one in Truman’s ring and tie-pin, we’d rely on specialty wireless pin hole and lipstick cameras.
Backhaul would be via a mixture of copper, optical fibre and radio frequency. Managing radio signals would be paramount- antennae placement and the use of repeaters and frequency filters would minimise signal interference.
With so many vision and audio sources, it would be necessary to use multiple Master Contol Rooms (MCR), representing the different areas of Seahaven.
Setting up a communications system with the show’s thousands of actors would be a huge undertaking. They could all be fed audio via in-ear Interrupted Fold Back devices, with a talk-over ability for the director to the main actors.
