“Why is he wearing earphones? Did the guide say?”
“She did say something about the men on the studio floor hearing directions from the control room. It is complicated,” put in Flo. “You can’t be expected to remember most of it.”
“Well, anyway, I know that big fishing-line thing is the mike boom. If I remember that much, Irene won’t think I’m too ignorant,” Judy concluded. “I wonder how they keep all that equipment from showing on a live TV show.”
The guide took time to explain it, telling them how accurately the cameras had to be focused so that the mike boom which dangled its microphone right over the heads of the performers was always just out of the picture.
“It does look like a fishing line, doesn’t it?” she agreed. “Are there any more questions before we go up to the sound room?”
Clarissa started to ask something and then changed her mind, saying, “It doesn’t matter.”
The guide gave a little performance of her own to demonstrate the sound effects. Rain was rice falling on waxed paper. Fire was the crackle of cellophane. There were blocks of wood for marching soldiers and other sounds equally amazing.
“And now,” she announced, emerging from the glassed-in sound room, “we are ready to see ourselves on television.”
A little ripple of anticipation went down the line that now followed the uniformed guide to another studio containing a pedestal camera and a television set.
“It’s a closed circuit,” she explained. “Your friends at home won’t see you, but you will see yourselves and each other. You will each have a chance to say a few words—”