Limkokwing University students on the Global Campus programme in London recently went on an exclusive half-day educational tour of Westgate Broadcasting Services premises.
Westgate Broadcasting Services is a rental studio complex with state-of-the-art facilities and services, including a 24/7 play-out centre, production galleries, editing suites, a graphics suite, dedicated news studio and news gathering service. The company serves clients broadcasting in multiple languages to the UK, Middle East, Indian Subcontinent and Eastern Europe.
The tour of the facility began with a general introduction of the company by John Reid, Westgate’s Broadcast Engineer. The students were then split into three groups, and the groups rotated between three sectors of the production process.
The first area concerned transmission, automation and the Master Control. The second area looked at studio operations, lighting, cameras, sound and vision, graphics, teleprompters and videotape. The third area dealt with pre/post-production, editing, research, scripting, archiving and graphics.
At all stages of the tour, students were taught various production processes, and shown how to use the equipment related to each process. The students were also given the chance to actually operate many of these cutting-edge equipment.
The tour was concluded with a question and answers session, in which students asked many questions. All questions were answered in detail by the Westgate staff.