As the appetite for reality television, has grown, programme-making has had to adapt to meet the voyeuristic demands of multidimensional filming. There is little flexibility to stop, rewind and repeat the action, so making a great show depends on the ability to capture every enraged outburst, slip of the tongue, revolted glance and teary exchange. This has led to the rise of the POV shot, with GoPros mounted on everything, everyone and in every nook or cranny to ensure each angle is covered and nothing is missed.

The rise of selfie TV

The Great British Bake Off, First Dates, Made in Chelsea, Geordie Shore – forget celebrities, it’s ‘normal’ people we want to see on the television nowadays. The cameras have well and truly turned. In fact our obsession with people-watching is so ingrained in popular culture, that one of the most popular programmes broadcasting at the moment is Gogglebox, a show where we watch other people watching television.

This brings many challenges, but among the biggest is managing the huge amounts of footage delivered to postproduction. If the cameras are not timecoded, the edit becomes a particularly laborious task. Hours and hours can be spent manually lining up each shot to sync with each other and with any separately recorded audio.

Can you sync it?

However, if each camera is using a Timecode Systems product to run timecode, they can be synced over RF and the footage can then easily be dropped into the edit timeline and automatically aligned. For example, you could have a :pulse assigned as a timecode master unit sitting with the sound mixer, :minitrx+ units in ‘slave’ mode on the main cameras and SyncBac PROs as ‘slaves’ on any GoPros. This set-up not only allows you to shoot with the certainty that all sources are synced, but also offers the added advantage of remote monitoring and control of devices from the BLINK Hub app. This includes the ability to stop and start the GoPros simultaneously from any smartphone, tablet or MacBook.

And in reality…

In recent years, our products have provided the timecode on shows including Made in Chelsea, The Great British Bake Off, MasterChef, Hunted, The Apprentice, and SyncBac PRO units are currently syncing the large number of GoPros used to shoot The Island with Bear Grylls. Although each of these shows comes with unique challenges, both on screen and behind the scenes, the reason production teams choose our wireless workflow is the same – it saves them time and money.

If you’re interested in finding out more about how timecode could help your reality television production, please get in touch.