 It’s a quiet afternoon at Beirut Hall, a studio complex on the outskirts of Lebanon’s capital. The MBC studio, where up to nine of MBC’s programs are taped and two live productions are broadcast, is only semi-assembled. Remnants of glass chandeliers and other shiny decor pieces lie strewn between wires. “We’re still recovering from the taping of Nishan’s new show Al Arrab,” says Radwan Kanaan, MBC’s chief technical facilities manager. Al Arrab (The Godfather) is a huge production. It requires 16 cameras, seven VTRs, and two intercom sytems. “Each show takes about 48 hours – sometimes consecutively – to prepare for,” says Kanaan. “You see that LCD screen? It’s a 0.6 pixel screen, the first in Lebanon with such high resolution,” he says, detailing how a graphics server routes graphics to the screen to serve as the backdrop for the production. As the technical director of a team of six, Kanaan compares himself to a mechanical engineer, who “makes the plan for construction, and then supervises the process” – intervening when he sees necessary. “I’ll supervise, for example, the setup of all cameras. But I’ll set up the mixers, connections to the base, and manage cable data myself.” Preparations for a new production start with a roundtable meeting, where Kanaan sits with the program producer, director, and light and sound designers. They tell him how many editors andproducers will be working on the production, and he will begin to plan for the master control room. “I’ll decide how many cameras we need, how many networks, how many video routers and selectors.” Installation takes about 15 days for a production such as Al Arrab. Longerrunning and less technically demanding shows, such as the popular talk show Kalam Nawaem, take two hours to set up. “As long as we’re only using eight cameras, installation is simple,” says Kanaan. “Anything over this will take time.” Kanaan also configures MBC’s automation system, for which the risk of technical error is ever-present. MBC broadcasts five channels from the same server: “If it crashes, we’ll get five-to-ten seconds of black across the board, which is absolutely unacceptable for MBC.” There are standby VTRs for backup, and tape archives for longer productions, such as movies. MBC recently bought another server, which serves as “a second mirror play list” and has extended capacity for the station’s newer channels. But “the nature of this work is that it comes with problems,” says Kanaan, who deals with sudden glitches by “scheduling them in.” The most common technical problem he has faced is a video-mixer that goes dead in the middle of a production. Kanaan uses a built-in back-up for live productions, but in taped shows, he stops the shooting to reload the mixer. Kanaan says he prefers to work on MBC’s own productions rather than programs that the company acquires, as “it’s technically harder to produce a program with set rules.”He finds more flexibility in directing an MBC production, where the technical side is up to him to command. But even when foreign producers visit Kanaan at the studio to see how well he is following the technical guidelines they have “set in stone,” he says, “they are generally impressed.” The best thing about his job, Kanaan insists, is that he has to keep himself up to date – and keep MBC’s equipment top-ofthe- line. “Al Jazeera is our only valid competition in terms of technology,” he says. And when he is not setting-up, overseeing, or crisis-managing, Kanaan continuously trains his staff. “Sharing information and know-how is crucial.” This is especially true in Kanaan’s position, where multi-tasking and overlapping roles are all in a day’s work. “As engineers, we need to understand and know how to do the work of the cameraman, the director, the sound and light directors,” says Kanaan. “But a cameraman doesn’t need to know how to use a mixer. You really have to know how to put together all of your knowledge. ”Kanaan, who holds a Technical Diploma, joined MBC at its Dubai headquarters in
2002, moving to the Beirut office in 2005. He started out as a chief engineer at Lebanon’sAl-Mashreq, which later became LBC, and also worked at MTV. |
What do you do? 
