You are currently covering a lot of programmes about the Pope’s life and death. Can you briefly report what type of programmes are going to be broadcast?

BLTV is based in a predominantly catholic area, with a large elderly population who are essentially house bound. We try to make programmes that give them an outlet and a chance to see what’s happening in the local area.
After the pope died we did one major production which involved speaking to a large number of church goers and some of the local priests about their memories of the pope. The local parish priest had in fact lived in Rome and met the pope on a number of occasions; this gave us great insight into the pope’s personality.

Did you interview people in the street? Like to know exactly what they felt about that?

We interviewed people as they left mass on the day before the actual funeral for the pope. Many people talked about how they travelled to Drogheda to see the pope when he visited in 1979. People had extraordinary clear images of this event.

Well I believe these are pre-recorded programmes, is the programme's post-production carried out on the Video Toaster?

All our content is edited and onlined in Video Toaster. This gives us a consistency and a very quick workflow.

Can you sketch out the production pipeline? From shooting to broadcasting?

The shooting schedule and pre-production is done.
A camera and sound person will go shoot the shots needed.
The footage is captured onto a video toaster editing suite.

An editor will begin work on the programme.

Myself, Mark or Nicola will do the edit. Nicola who has a background in sound recording, was taken on as a volunteer mid-2004. After a couple of months training she quickly progressed to editing and producing some of our most popular shows such as Ardoyne Live. Nicola is now full time with BLTV and spends most of her time editing on Video Toaster.

Intros, titles and effects are prepared using LightWave and Aura.

Once the picture and the sound edit are finished and the picture quality is broadcast legal we send it out on the channel.

Do you also use Video Toaster for the titling and motion graphics?

We use both LightWave and Aura for most of our titles. When we need to get a programme made urgently we use the character generator.

You said you also used LightWave. Do you mean LightWave that’s on Video Toaster’s card?

We use it within the Video Toaster card. Many of our company stingers and intros to shows use LightWave. All the modelling and rendering is produced within LightWave.