Sky News
Table of Contents
Lighting Design & Oversight
- Designed and Oversaw the visual output for all the Sky News (UK) studios for over a decade which included the historic political dramas around Brexit and the challenges of the Covid-19 Pandemic.
- Ensured a clear and consistent visual presentation to a worldwide audience 24 hours a day throughout this period, delivered with zero on-air impacting issues.
- Primary point of direct contact / support for all lighting matters to the Studio Directors (at a high design level) and the Technical Supervisors (at the operational detail level).
- Specified and Designed the studio lighting for all the studios in use and at that time, together with a resilient control system of hardware and software, all bespoke designed around the needs of, and feedback from, the operational end-users, in addition to personal operational experience.
- All this was achieved in an environment of constantly evolving Production requirements, with their unpredictable studio guests and live events.
He designed and built not just the lighting of their regular studio output, but built or refurbished all the dedicated Sky News studios across London. In addition, he was the Lighting Director for the majority of their major one-off and recurring productions elsewhere on the Sky Campus in both General Purpose Studios and Office spaces, as well as their biggest Outside Broadcasts.
These included pre-general election debates featuring the (then) Prime Ministers and Leaders of the Opposition, a landmark pre-Brexit Referendum debate, three General Election (and one US Election) Nights. He was also the Series Lighting Designer and Director for The Great Debate, the long-running weekly shows The Pledge, and Big Ideas.
He successfully steared-through the transistion from a single large traditional studio equipped with legacy tungsten lighting sources to a interconnected set of specialist studios across multiple locations fully-equiped with state-of-the-art efficient LED sources, designed with a wide tollerance for production fluidity. This was delivered together with a fully-bespoke multi-site remote control system used by a diverse team of non-lighting specialists.
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Prime Minister Debates.
Attempts to give the UK a version of the head-to-head “US Presidential style” Debates had for decades been repeatidly rebuffed by whoever is in power at the time, but with no clear result ahed, everyone gave-in and agreed to a very low-key version for the 2010 General Election. Richard wasn’t invovlved in this, as had only just started Freelancing for Sky at that point, however the relevant thing is that both this Debate, and Election as a whole, resulted in what can be best described as a No-Score Draw for all teams involved…
So, roll on a then-legally-fixed nice and predictable 5 year delay until the next one. Nobody could then have predicted the utter carnage the next five years would result in!
Subsection Link - Who Wants To Be a Prime Minister?
Election Night Specials
Of course, those verbal fights were just a warm-up before the main event - the General Elections
And for Sky News, Election Night is when all the stops come out, records are broken, tension is high, and the cliches are cliched.
Richard designed, built, and ran the lighting for the main overnight studio presentation for the UK General Elections in 2015, 2017, 2019, and also for the USA Election in 2020. Plus setup various Local Election Night Specials in the Millbank Newsroom.
Subsection Link - The Biggest Nights of Political Tension ...Since The Last OneFlagship Outside Broadcasts
All-Day Channel Takeovers or just a grand old lady doing a piece to camera - Richard’s experience was sometimes called-for outside the studios.
Full Studio Productions
Regular studio Output - Introduction
The construction and build of these are covered in detail in the Studio Builds section
The lighting for all the day-to-day use of these dedicated News studio spaces was designed and set by Richard, as well as providing Oversight and Support to the Technical Supervisors who had to operate them day-to-day. He was then frequently called-in to revise the lighting ahead of any major changes or unusual one-off usage. A random selection of example images are shown below :
Studio A - The Legacy Studio
Richard expanded and supportered LD Don Hart’s work in this space through to its eventually closure. Of particular note was his introduction of the first ETC Source 4 LED fixtures for a vast new Video Wall.
Studio 21 - The Glass Box
Studio 6 - double-ended Real and Virtual Studio
Nothing to show in [https://www.lightingdir.com/ images/SkyNews/Studio6 ] or folder does not existMillbank - multi-purpose studio
Plus other used at various times included the Newsroom, an ENG Studio, and the constantly-in-use DTL (Down the Lines) broom cupboard.
City Studios 2 & 3 - shared spaces with CNBC
Nothing to show in [https://www.lightingdir.com/ images/SkyNews/StudioCity ] or folder does not existGeneral-purpose studio Productions - Introduction
Other productions took place in the General-Purpose studios on Sky’s Campus which were shared with Sky Sports (etc).
The first two were long-running series, and the others were major one-offs :
The Pledge (2016-2020, Studio F)
Lead Lighting Director for this highly-provocative weekly Debate show; recorded As-Live a few hours before transmission (leaving just enough time for any edits for critical legal reasons…!)
Five …highly opinionated… pundits each in turn presented their topical idea, on everythign from disposable coffee cups to immigration, to which the others panelists would then vocally argue for or against.
No moderator or presenter, and the show was deliberately designed to provoke reactions & conversations on social media - and hopefully thinking - by viewers.
Filmed in the round with a gorgeous £150k glossy glass set - plenty of challenges in a small studio to keep the cameras and operators hidden, including clever AutoCue blanking.
After 9 months (…!) of weekly pilots, this ran weekly from 4 years, until cancelled in the first Covid Lockdown.
- Lighter Argument
- More Serious
- Outtakes
The Great Debate (2021-2022, Studio F)
- Trevor Phillips presented an audience discussion show… where the audience is at home.
- VR & AR used together with a real set
- Originally started during Covid restrictions, hence why everyone is so far apart - and why the audience is at home!
- Every episode was lit by Richard.
Covid Crisis - Learning the Lessons (2021, Studio 4/5)
Detailed Show Breakdown
This series of 3 shows presented by Sophie Ridge, just a year after things started, was the start of a serious inqury into into what when right and what went wrong. Due to continuing proximity rules, all guests were at home and shown on video walls, and the camerawork was all on a Steadicam and Jib, shooting “in the round” (360-degrees).
Also due to distancing, the decision was made to use a lighting rig made-up almost entirely of moving-lights, to reduce the need for people working on the studio floor adjusting lights at the same time as the presenters and camera operators
Vari*lite VL-1100 were used as Keylights, Martin Mac Aura’s as Backlights, Martin TW-1 lit the scenic graphic panels from above together with RobertJuliet Dalis from below.
Comparing with the console MagicSheet, which shows the final version of the show, its clear that a lot of existing studio tungsten 2k’s had to be used in a line along the top edge of the studio. Due to the steep video walls, Sophie had to be lit from both sides - but if the light came in from a long way away, it would splash all over the set behind her, as well as have shadows from the cameras. Which is why here’s a whole series of them in a line in both directions. As long as can get these a reasonable distance away, once carefully focused they will evenly merge into one another. If too close, you will get hot spots - the inverse square law is not your friend in a small studio. Fortunately, this studio can have lights up to 9m in the air - in reality they were probably about 5-6m up. as Sophie was stood too close to the wall to get anything in from above when facing that screen. The pre-production plot for this one-off production is shown below, as an example of how to approach the challenges of shooting in the round.
One Hundred Women (2018, Studio 4/5)
- Kay Burley hosted all-female debate and audience to see what’s improved, and what still needs to improve, for women.
- Noteable for all the keylights being VL-1000 to cope with the continous walking and 360-degree shooting style used - due to the studio size giving a very short throwm the ones on Key were tracking back and forth genthly between preset positionsthrough the show.
Credits and Thanks
Although all of the design and development together with much of the studio tweaking and support was done by Richard Bowles_ nothing could have got or stayed on air without the continous support of the great team of Sky Production Electricians (at one point there were over 20x Staff plus as many Freelancers!)
The day-to-day output was thanks to tha care and attention to detail by the whole team of Technical Supervisors and Technical Operators. The major productions were supported by Finally, in particular, none of this would have been possible without the early guidance of Don Hart and his Studio A lighting design, and for Dave Evans for cracking the Glass Box puzzle.
The support and feedback from Sky News throughout was essential, starting with the always conscise - and always absolutely spot-on - then-Head of Sky News, John Ryley - to the indispensible guidance together with their total trust and backing given by the Head of Studio Output Jon Bennet ssucceeded by Ben Wickeham - through to the many Directors, Producers, and the wider team in Sky News; far too many to name-check!
And of course, the coopperation and trust of the on-screen Talent, to whom it was gratifying to see the relief in their eyes when they saw that Richard was present for the launch of their latest regular strands or one-off specials, knowing they could then stop worrying if theyt looked with each of whom Richard developed a professional relationship customised to their respective needs, most notably Kay Burley.
- Although all of the design and development was done by Richard, none of it coould have realised without the support of a great team of Sky Production Electricians together with skilled Freelance Console Operators.