BBC Studios and Post Production (BBC S&PP) supports the awarding winning Harry Hill’s TV Burp, made by Avalon for ITV1. In the show Harry Hill examines the previous week’s television in his odd and surreal manner, ranging from soap operas to documentaries to reality TV. Now in its tenth series, the hugely popular satirical show is a slick production machine with a very tight filming schedule. The show is recorded live virtually in real time, in front of a studio audience each week, with parts of the show pre-recorded just hours before, edited and played in.

Although a clip based show, a wide variety of sketches with sets, actors and props are featured each week and the production team and S&PP often has to create very different scenes - from night-time shots, interior hospital shots and even places abroad. These are created by a combination of green screen, setting, camera tricks and props.

Series 10 the show is being recorded in Studio Four, the former home of Friday Night with Jonathan Ross.

The speed of the turnaround from recording to broadcast is very short, so the show is shot on multiple cameras to speed up the process and provide a wide variety of shots. Multi -camera also gives you options in the edit, especially in the pre-recorded sketches. Having more than one camera recording at anyone time means you can get more coverage of a scene in less takes. The show uses six cameras, five on heavy-weight pedestals and one on a hawk in lightweight mode, so that it can easily be used as a handheld camera, which is useful for filming tricky sketches. A PSC camera is also sometimes hired film around the Television Centre site, for outside scenes such as vox pops.

The overhead lighting rig and set is usually installed overnight. The scenic and electrical teams arrive in the morning to do a final dressing and fine light. The show is very clip heavy and the loading of the various clips onto the LSM and fine tuning them begins early in the morning from around 8am, whilst this the rest of the crew is busy on the studio floor getting all the equipment up and running. By 10am the studio is usually all set up and ready to begin rehearsing and recording the pre-recorded sketches.

TV Burp is not your typical clips show, as Harry often likes to top and tail the clips with additional material that makes it look as if he was in the original footage. This means the cameras have to be set up meticulously to match the original source material, so the footage can be cut in seamlessly. The set needs to look as convincing as possible and the camera angles also have to be chosen extremely carefully, especially if stand-ins are being used, rather than the original actors. The short rehearsals that are carried out before the recordings are often as much about the technicalities of selling the shots and rehearsing the camera moves as they are about getting the acting right!

From a technical perspective, all the cameras need to have consistent colours and black levels so that it is clear when the Vision Mixer cuts from one shot to another that the cameras are all looking at the same thing. Each camera is ‘racked’ individually in the lighting gallery to ensure this and also to make sure that the shots match the VT play-ins.

As soon as the pre-recorded sketches have been filmed, the material is passed on to BBC S&PP’s Avid editor, who swiftly cuts the material together in time to play into the evening’s live recordings.

The show is fairly props heavy, with Harry often producing props to make unexpected jokes in reference to the clips. As the show is recorded as live, these sections have to be very carefully worked out so that the stage manager and various helpers are able to bring the props to Harry and take them away without being seen on camera. Often the changes are done during the clips, but when there is not time, special camera shots and angles are devised to help. Any big stunts or anything that involves Harry getting messy are saved to the end when there won’t be the same time pressure on him to be cleaned up.

After the show has been recorded the producer and Harry, along with director and rest of team, work out which jokes landed best with the audience and any alternative links that need to be recorded to give them the most options in the edit, working methodically through them until everyone is satisfied they have everything ‘in the can’.

It is really a team of people that make the show work, with the experience and understanding of how each department works together.

Take a virtual tour of the Harry Hill's TV Burp studio.

For further information, please contact:
Georgie Hollett, Head of Communications, BBC Studios and Post Production
Tel: +44 (0)20 8624 9495
Mobile : +44 (0) 783484 5612
Email : georgie.hollett@bbc.co.uk

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