'‘What’s Cooking?'’ is the new Channel 4 daytime cookery show backed by a major UK high street supermarket chain and produced by Superhero TV of Predictable Media. Ben Shephard and Lisa Faulkner presented the show with celebrity guests and well-known chefs competing against each other to cook up recipes as viewers interact and ask questions via Twitter and Facebook. The show is broadcast live from a temporary studio in the car-park of a premium supermarket store in Becton, East London. Cameras within the studio follow the preparation of the food while others are used by mobile camera operators shadow the presenters along the supermarket aisles as the competing teams collect ingredients. The technical integration and installation of the program was undertaken by 110 Productions; a technical services and solutions provider for independent broadcast and television productions, with the assistance of 3D Broadcast.
Setting up the staging, lighting, camera positions and configuration was no simple task as the purpose-built studio was lit with a combination of LED Fresnel and soft lights and features gigantic windows producing high backlit brightness and long shadows that result in ever-changing shooting conditions. Of course this was one of the greatest factors that made the show such a challenge to produce and a potential threat to footage being ‘television-worthy’. Peter Johnston of 110 commented; “The British weather will always spring surprises. Over the course of an hour the contrast between the interior and exterior lighting can change markedly; maintaining a consistent and natural look on screen is vital but is difficult to achieve against quickly changing lighting levels. The typical solution is to add polarising film to the windows but, this was a very expensive option.”
