24 Hour Quiz

LED lighting provides turnkey solution for new reality quiz.

Lighting director Will Charles and an experienced ELP crew provided innovative production solutions for '24 Hour Quiz' - a new reality quiz show for ITV.

A hybrid between Big Brother and your typical TV game show, 24 Hour Quiz is an experimental format introduced by Endemol UK. Quizmates are locked away 24 hours a day in a specially built 'Quiz Pod' and bombarded with questions around the clock. Every question answered correctly wins them money.
This cross-platform event, shot from Three Mills Studios in east London, ran across ITV1 and ITV2. With additional coverage on interactive TV and the Web it was, quite literally, always on 24 hours a day, seven days per week for seven weeks.

Commenting on logistics ELP crew boss Joe Sherno points out that "with a job of this nature we chose to have fewer people on site but for a longer period of time. And due to the experimental and interactive nature of the production, Endemol were making continuous improvements and modifications virtually throughout the whole seven week period….We needed to be on the ball the whole time coming up with on the spot creative lighting solutions"

The most unusual part of the production had to be the Pod which provided living quarters for contestants. Once constructed this structure was completely wired up by ELP electrician Craig Broughton. "It was just like a home installation…" comments Broughton. "…I had to install a boiler, air conditioning, ring mains, a functioning kitchen, all in addition to powering the studio and the OB village."

But it was the lighting solution provided by LD Will Charles which is perhaps the most noteworthy part of this production.

The first 'practical' consideration was that the Pod was a small enclosed area so using conventional TV lighting would have been very cramped and would have given out far too much heat making the shell uninhabitable.

"The lights were up virtually the whole time" comments Charles. "so I worked with Set Designer Marcus Blee to construct the pod ceiling entirely from Pulsar LED Panels. It looked a bit like an office ceiling but it solved the heat problem and gave me a number of added options "

Through the use of LED's Charles was able to create a range of flexible colour options within the set which is unusual for Reality TV.

"Normally when you see reality shows the lighting in the living quarters is very basic, usually just a daylight wash with limited colours. But through the use of 100 plus LED fixtures including 50 chroma batons, 60 chroma panels and the new MR16 LED fitting I was able to create a number of different moods."

Daytime effects ranged from gentle day light to a full-on bright orange glow and night time moods utilised dark blue and purple contrasts. It also allowed for more colourful backings during the game show live transmissions.

From a power supply perspective LED lights are very easy to deal with and hardly make a dent in the supply. As crew chief Joe Sherno pointed out "the extensive use of LED lighting in the Pod meant that we were only pulling about180 amps!...which in context is nothing."

LED technology was also deployed as part of the outer studio set. It provided a modern look in keeping with the contemporary quiz show. 70 Chroma panels under the studio floor provided a way to animate the set during moments of 'excitement'.

Chroma strips encased in Perspex provided contestant location points and enhanced the head to head challenge area. Set Designer Marcus Blee was keen to use an optical film manufactured by 3M on most of the glass surfaces. This had the effect of refracting , deflecting and reflecting any light passing through it. This produced some visually stunning looks but also added a further complexity to lighting an already challenging project.

Blee had used the 3M film on previous projects using fluorescents and had constructed a 12 meter long wall of optical tube as part of the set. Part of the brief was to definitively brand the afternoon and evening shows with different coloured looks. 36 Chroma strips in this optical tube allowed this to be achieved and produced some interesting effects.

ELP increased their already extensive stock of chromabanks to service this job and provided an assortment of fixed and moving lights including: Kinoflow's, Source 4's, Mac 600's, Mac 500's, and Fresnels.

Most notably 12 x VL1000's provided the lighting director with the flexibility to light 360 degrees of key angles required for the cameras. " Normally a game show would have a much larger studio space often with an audience " remarks Charles. " Here half the studio is taken by the pod living area. Much of the work would normally be done by follow spots but in studio 15 at Three Mills we did not have the space. In addition many of the trusses are fairly inaccessible over the set. Refocusing for all the changes as the show evolved would have been tricky given the studio is constantly recording 24 hours a day for nearly two months.

So instead the crew panoramically fixed the VL1000's onto Slick Lightbeam truss which gave the director unlimited options. There was even scope for a live view out of the Pod window and into the adjacent quiz studio.

Charles also recommended the use of camera filters rather than smoke machines to soften selected camera shots and soothe the mood. "I didn't want to use smoke due to the nature of the show. However, we are now so used to the softening effect of 'haze' that without it I think that pictures can look too harsh and unglamorous."
"Overall I was very pleased with the results" concludes Charles. "This production shows how through the appropriate use of modern techniques and LED based lighting systems you can turn a potentially troublesome project into one which might change the way Reality TV programmes are lit in the future."