What is a TV Centre?

A play, perhaps, or a comedy show, or a current affairs programme, brought to your screen ‘from the North’, by Granada.

How does it get there? How is it produced? Where does it come from?

This booklet tells you about Granada’s TV Centre: how it works; how Granada programmes are devised, produced, and transmitted; how they are developed from an idea to become the picture on your screen.

In 1955 Granada bought a derelict five acre site in the heart of Manchester. The bulldozers moved in, the builders followed, then came the electronic engineers. Between them they created what is today one of the most up-to-the-minute television centres in the world — the Granada TV Centre, Manchester.

It was designed by Ralph Tubbs, the architect who designed the Dome of Discovery at the Festival of Britain in 1951.



Granada TelevisionGranada is the company that provides the Monday to Friday programmes for Independent Television in the North of England. Granadaland includes Lancashire, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, parts of Cheshire and North Wales. In terms of...

Granada Television

Granada is the company that provides the Monday to Friday programmes for Independent Television in the North of England. Granadaland includes Lancashire, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, parts of Cheshire and North Wales. In terms of population it is the largest region. A quarter of Britain’s population live in Granadaland.

Television in the United Kingdom is provided by two systems: Independent Television, which is paid for by the sale of a limited amount of advertising time on the air; and the British Broadcasting Corporation, which is financed by viewers’ licence money. Whether you watch BBC programmes as well, or only ITV programmes, you have to have a licence for your television set. But none of the licence money goes to ITV.

Under the Independent Television Authority the country is split up into regions. Television transmissions for each region are the responsibility of a different company or companies. But the different companies interchange many of their programmes to form the Independent Television network. Thus most of Granada’s programmes are seen all over the country.

Nearly 700 people work in the TV Centre. Many programme departments and creative people are needed in order to provide all the talents and knowledge demanded by a television service.

Equally important are all the electronic engineering departments to look after the cameras and their control equipment, to arrange the sound circuits, to install the special lighting.

For its success television depends upon the interplay of many arts and skills: those of the producer, director, designer, writer, actor, engineer, technician — the list is a long one.

We will look first at the work of the programme departments as they prepare a production for the studio, and then at the work of the technicians who bring it to your screen.



“Above: The foyer of the TV Centre.
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Above: The foyer of the TV Centre.



“Above: The starting point. This bare, empty studio (the TV Centre’s Studio 12) is ready for rigging up with the sets and lighting for a new programme. The solitary figure gives an idea of its huge size.
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Above: The starting point. This bare, empty studio (the TV Centre’s Studio 12) is ready for rigging up with the sets and lighting for a new programme. The solitary figure gives an idea of its huge size.



Making a startGetting a television programme from the floor of a studio at the TV Centre on to the screen of a television set in somebody’s home is an exciting and complicated operation. Certain steps are common to all programmes but the nature of...

Making a start

Getting a television programme from the floor of a studio at the TV Centre on to the screen of a television set in somebody’s home is an exciting and complicated operation. Certain steps are common to all programmes but the nature of the work that has to be done before it goes ‘on the air’ depends very largely on what sort of programme it is. It may be a play that has to be cast and rehearsed over a period of weeks; or a documentary programme that requires months of research; or an interview arranged on the spot; or an educational programme with diagrams and working models; or a filmed production.

The head of a programme’s production team is the producer. He is responsible for co-ordinating the work of everyone involved in the production. Working closely with him is the director and the floor manager. The director is responsible for directing the actors (if there are any), for discussing the scenery with the designer, and for directing the movement of the cameras on the studio floor. He is assisted in this by the floor manager. ‘Electronic’ quality of the picture is the responsibility of the production’s technical supervisor.

Above: A production planning meeting in session.



The blueprintOne of the first steps in the production of a programme is to prepare the script. This is the ‘blueprint’ that contains the actors’ lines and the main stage directions. In some cases two scripts are prepared. First there is the rehearsal...

The blueprint

One of the first steps in the production of a programme is to prepare the script. This is the ‘blueprint’ that contains the actors’ lines and the main stage directions. In some cases two scripts are prepared. First there is the rehearsal script, followed by the camera script, which is in greater detail, and gives full camera instructions.

Arranging terms with writers and buying the television rights of a play or story to be adapted into a play is the job of the Play Department. The Casting Department finds and engages artists for each production.

After the play has been cast the director starts rehearsals. These take place for two or three weeks and, in the first place, without sets. The cast do not move on to the sets in the studio until a few days before production.

Above: The ‘read-through’, or first rehearsal of all, without sets or costumes.



Graphics

While the actors are rehearsing, the production is going through its ‘drawing-board’ stage. The Graphics Department makes titles and credits for the beginning and end of a programme. It also prepares captions and special moving optical effects like graphs and animated diagrams. Graphics work sets the tone of a production and gives it a style of its own.

Above: Preparing titles and credits.



Studio design

The Studio Design Department plan the scenery, the settings and the props for everything from a two-and-a-half-hour play to a two minute insert in a topical magazine programme.

The designer has to be ingenious as well as creative. One of his most difficult tasks is fitting all the sets needed in a play into the studio in such a way that enough space is left for the director’s camera angles.


Top: Discussing the floor plan and checking camera angles on a model of the set.

Bottom: Mirrors are often used for specially angled shots.



Scenery construction

The designers’ drawings go to the scenery construction workshops to be translated into studio sets. This is a lath-and-plaster make-believe world where nothing is quite what it seems. Windows are made of paint, trees are built of plaster. Men in paint-splashed overalls construct palaces and pent-houses, decks of ships, saloon bars, fairy-tale coaches, dusty railway carriages - anything the production requires (above).



Left: Human ‘spiders’ made these cobwebs.

Right: The set is ‘dressed’ down to the last detail.



Wardrobe and Make-up

Two more departments that help to create the enchanting world of make-believe are Wardrobe and Make-Up.

Wardrobe would be a children’s paradise with its rows and rows of dresses and costumes. But here dressing-up is no children’s game. It is a skilled, professional art. No boutique has a range like Wardrobe’s: Fashions of today, yesterday and tomorrow, fancy dress and plain dress - all are here. Deft fingers make sure that the costumes are an exact fit (top).

From Make-Up comes that intoxicating smell of grease-paint which, once experienced, can never be forgotten. The wiles of the make-up artist can add years to a face in minutes - and remove them even quicker. No one is quite themselves when they leave Make-Up.

Bottom left: Tinker tailor soldier… mermaid - wardrobe has it.

Bottom right: An actor’s chest is tattooed by a make-up artist, who copies the elaborate design from a ‘practice run’ on her own wrist.



‘Stand by Studio’One day the dressing-room corridor (above) may look like a doss-house, the next like an Italian Palazzo. Everyone who goes in front of the cameras - stars, extras, quiz contestants, newscasters - all pass along it on their way to the...

‘Stand by Studio’

One day the dressing-room corridor (above) may look like a doss-house, the next like an Italian Palazzo. Everyone who goes in front of the cameras - stars, extras, quiz contestants, newscasters - all pass along it on their way to the studio. Doors on the left lead into dressing rooms, those on the right into Make-Up and Wardrobe.

While actors await their call from the dressing rooms to the studio, last minute adjustments are being made (below) to the camera positioning, the lights, and the sound booms.

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Light and Sound

More than 200 lamps may light one TV play, and the power they use would light up Manchester’s Deansgate four times over. Most of the lights hang on telescopic arms from a metal grid so that they can be raised and lowered mechanically (top). They are controlled from an array of push-buttons in the Studio Control Room, where pre-recorded sound effects and music are also mixed in during production.


Studio control room

‘Stand by studio’, calls a voice from the studio floor.

The programme director looks out through the glass panel of his control room. Lights are on, pre-recorded tapes and gramophone records at the ready. Artists and cameramen wait for their cues, and for the director’s commands. The cameras are his eyes: as their pictures come up on the monitor screens in front of him he decides the moment when each shall go on the air (bottom right).


Bottom left: A microphone, passed on a boom just above head height carries sound from studio to control room.



From the North Granada presents

Weeks, perhaps months, of hard work have now come to a climax as millions of viewers switch on to watch the result.

Every year Granada produces about 1500 separate studio programmes. They are of all sorts: entertainment, education, information. They include plays, drama series, current affairs and documentaries, comedy shows, music, opera and ballet, question and answer quizzes, children’s programmes, adult education, schools programmes, news and magazine programmes.

These, and the next two pages, illustrate a few of them.



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