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The final stage of Miss Russia 2009 National Beauty Pageant has taken place on 7 March 2009 at Central Exhibition Centre in Moscow. The ultimate awards ceremony has become one of the brightest and most memorable in the history of this prestigious event. The preliminary stages lasted for a month and involved over 50 prospective competitors, but only 15 were ultimately selected. For them the last event consisted of three more extra stages. The first one determined ten candidates being chosen, the second saw their number reduced to five, and the ultimate phase had only three remaining competitors left to win Miss Russia 2009 crowning title. Choosing the winner has been the goal set out before the panel of competent judges comprised of celebrated artists, designers, actors, musicians, businessmen and high fashion couturiers. Using the 10 grade system, they could rate the competitors objectively. The winners were eventually elected on the basis of grades they have accumulated over the course of the entire competition. The pageant’s Organizational Committee invited us to develop and implement the user-friendly comprehensive voting system. Our technical specialists faced the task of setting up a modern, flexible and very reliable facility to be used with great efficiency in broadcast of this exciting program. We have developed an ultimate system for the collection of votes, their analysis and selection of winners. It provided an operational control over the voting process which was carried out by an independent auditing firm; moreover, it could display and print the preliminary results and voting protocols. At the same time, all these were graphically played out on air and shown upon the video screens installed on stage. For many years we have worked at similar events, accumulating invaluable experience in their broadcast. That is why we were able to work on a fine line between IT and television technologies, creating unique software programs that could be used in many similar competitions. Our portfolio consists of a wide range of projects, including creation of the voting systems and graphic content for the TEFI Television Awards Ceremony, taking place in Moscow annually, as well as implementation of an internal information TV channel for St Petersburg International Economic Forum back in 2008 and 2007. Furthermore, in recent months we have participated in filming and broadcasting of such popular television shows as “What? Where? When?”, “Love At First Sight”, “Brain Ring”, “Russian roulette”, “Can You Guess A Tune?”, “The Golden Gramophone”, and many others. The good experience we have gathered working at them coupled with in-depth knowledge and understanding of the cutting-edge television technologies have facilitated our putting into effect a highly reliable tapeless workflow system able to meet all the requirements made by the contest producers. Moreover, we have come up with a large number of innovative ideas and practical suggestions meant to significantly increase the system’s functional reliability, making it not only user-friendly, but also efficient and easy-to-operate. Overall, the voting system developed by us has consisted of a hardware-software facility with distributed network architecture. The constituent elements were comprised of:
The database contained all relevant information about the competitors: their names, surnames, age, place of birth, domicile, height, weight, recent photos, etc. There was also some data about the jury members. The other important information kept in the database would relate to the voting results obtained by each participant in the course of the competition. These were also available for viewing in percentage ratio. The control workstation has been a computer terminal supplied with appropriate software and used to monitor the voting results in real time. A summary table illustrating the current voting results per each competition stage would be displayed upon the computer screen. Filled by the jury members, this would also reflect the system condition – connections with voting desks, as well as graphic and monitoring workstations. Their primary purpose has been running of all voting processes starting from the jury registration, switching between the competition stages, beginning and end of voting, filling of database with initial sets of data, as well as input and processing of the ultimate vote results received from all the voting desks. These were 7-inch touch screen tablet PCs. We have selected these devices on purpose. The touch screen application allows creating a user-friendly interface. The appliance of accessible interface and displaying on screen the prompt commands practically eliminated the necessity of preliminary training sessions in use of this system for and by the jury members. As the voting begins, the competitors’ profiles are automatically displayed on screen along with their photographs and other appropriate information about them delivered from the database. The sensor buttons indicating the grades (from 1 to 10) are located down the screen bottom. The system can use two voting modes – the sequential and arbitrary (random). In the first scenario the voting desk displays on screen the competitors’ profiles in the sequential order: one after another. In the second case, the jury members are shown an entire page filled with photographs of competitors at the current stage. The judges must vote as they see fit. The monitoring workstations are the extra PCs required to control the voting process. The summary table is shown on the computer screen to display the current results. The PCs are installed at the workstations of all those who should be able to view the voting information, e.g. studio administrators located in the main hall and behind the stage, TV directors seated up in the OB van, as well as representatives of an audit company who are responsible for monitoring of compliance standards with the current voting rules. The stations can print out the end voting results, their official protocols, final envelopes and the winners’ names. The ATLAS graphic server can be used to create multi-layered compositions containing graphics, animation, database information, as well as voting results. The ATLAS output (SDI or analog component) may be connected to the master switcher and video screens installed upon the stage and all over the venue. They can display both the end results and the dynamics of voting in real time. The voting process visualization with the aid of the ATLAS graphic station can increase the effectiveness and audience appeal of any popular TV contest or show. While developing the voting system, the INTV specialists have tried to establish the certain universality of all its major components. For instance, the computer software for the monitoring stations can be installed both on the standard PC terminals, laptops or compact tablet PC. The use of tablet PCs plugged wirelessly affords the TV personnel greater freedom of movement within the studio or stage environment. This becomes an essential factor during the filming and broadcasting of such spectacular dynamic events. As always, we have paid close attention to the system reliability. This entailed the database backup, use of the reserve facility for graphic stations and availability of alternate controls. The main communication network is reserved, while the software is equipped with the fast recovery mechanisms to be used in case of a network failure. All critical blocks of the facility are powered from uninterrupted power supply (UPS). So the system carries on running in an off-line mode. Owning to the deployment of this complex facility (tablet PCs, laptops, etc.) the voting system can be defined by the high degree of mobility. In addition to that, it can be installed for less than two hours. All local installments and program software may be uploaded on the system components from the main control station. The voting system is distinguished by scalability and adjustability. Its configuration requirements may alter depending on other beauty pageants. For instance, the quantity of the jury members may vary, as well as the amount of voting desks, number of rounds and voting methods themselves that can be either sequential (alternate) or arbitrary. All these settings are also available in our software. The graphic design of voting desk interface (background themes, logos etc.) can be created according to the style of a competition. We have developed and used this judging system with the view of its repeated use. Testing it, we have done our best to ensure its operability for the future. Our experiece tells us that the current requirements for such contests may vary from time to time, and we wanted to bear that in mind. It was also important for us to foresee and comply with the TV directors' demands and wishes. As a result, the system has worked really well this time, which means that it could be successfully used in the future. We envisage its use in a wide range of shows which require the casting of votes by both the jury members and home-viewing audiences. Some of them may choose to utilize their SMS message services that can also be registered by the system. In conclusion, we are pleased to say that the title of Miss Russia 2009 was won by the 18-year-old model Sophia Rudieva who represented our hometown. We would like to congratulate Sophia and wish her the best of luck at the forthcoming Miss Universe 2009 Pageant held in the Bahamas in August. download |
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