BURBANK, CALIF.: Bexel supplied custom equipment package for ABC’s new interactive real-time reality competition, “The Glass House.” As ABC’s second in-house produced show, Bexel worked closely with technical consultant Jerry Kaman and Tim Bock, ABC’s vice president of production for alternative series and specials, to find solutions that would help meet the demands of the aggressive, technically advanced 24-hour show.
“The Glass House” features 14 contestants living and competing for a quarter-million dollars in a state-of-the-art house that is under complete surveillance, with no access to the outside world. The contestants aren’t just competing with each other, but also playing the game to win over the audience each week.
Bexel supplied more than 50 cameras for “The Glass House,” including close to 40 robotic cameras, seven fixed cameras and eight large studio cameras and handhelds for the show. Among these were Panasonic’s new AW-HE120 2.2 mega-pixel robotic cameras. Not only do the Panasonic robotic cameras provide excellent picture quality, their entire control system is IP-based.
The production also called for robotic cameras with infrared capabilities. For those, Bexel turned to Camera Corps’ Q-Ball HD/SD pan-and-tilt camera system, which incorporates a built-in 10x zoom optical lens and smooth accelerating pan/tilt motors in a weatherproof aluminum sphere with a diameter of about 4.5 in.
For the project, Bexel also built a custom HD control room with a large fiber infrastructure and custom workbenches for producers and loggers. A Pesa router was utilized with a distributed audio routing system, which made the cabling very easy—requiring the team to simply interconnect everything using fiber.
