Election Night 2000

Election Night 2000
Genre:	Event Coverage
Broadcast:	Friday 10th March 2000
Producer(s):	Alex Hudson Chris Parker

Production Team

Election Night 2000 was produced by Chris Parker and Alex Hudson. Matt Hammond was in charge of technical matters.

Chris Ward, Chris Parker, Alex Hudson and Michael Prior-Jones were the directors.

Sets

YSTV took over Derwent JCR to act as both a control room and link set. The link set consisted of the silver-topped Ikea trestle table against a purple setboard. Two presenters on stools sat either side of it, with a converted Sony Trinitron FST television placed between them.

In the adjacent room, D/016, was the Press Conference, which was a new initiative after some chaotic business with getting candidates interviewed the previous year. Unfortunately it suffered from a rather unprepossessing set (or lack thereof!) and having URY's microphones all over the place!

There was also a single camera, the Panasonic MS4, and a presenter in the Dining Room.

Technical

Matt Hammond wrote a very swish-looking graphics system that ran on his Acorn Risc PC, which was then controlled by commands sent over a serial line from a user interface on a control machine (also an Acorn). There were also a number of other Acorn machines that provided cues for presenters, although this system was rushed into service and didn't work that well.

Screengrabs from the programme can be seen here [on YSTV's website].

The "silver-topped trestle table" (always referred to in full by those who were there) would later be used by the membership for all manner of purposes including various off-camera uses, as the main set of Bulletin for a while, Off The Cuff and coming full circle as the support for the Bona Dicta table top in Elections 2007.