Wales Today Central Square launch

lol Sour grapes methinks!

I wonder if we might see some AR during the main programme tonight to put all that empty space into use...

The overall, the set up is nice. Nice camera moves. I agree it does feel very dark. Not sure about that matte black floor. One major issue to me is the actual studio lighting. The presenter at the desk and the guest...absolutely awful lighting. The lights IMO are the wrong temperature. They are cold and leaning into the blue spectrum and it makes the shot completely flat. But also the light on the main presenter position needs to be completely re-lit. It could be the black-top desk.... maybe some in-desk chin lights?. But there shadows under the chin and eyes makes the entire view look completely flat and the presenter look tired and haggard. Also the overall studio has zero texture lighting. When you have such a wide expanse across a wide open floor, texture lighting does wonders. OVerall its not a bad look. I just wish they pulled a BBC Scotland, and went for something completely different than just a regional-esque look. But its nice.

Here is the texture lighting on the floor.... blue spots at night and warmer spots during the day, used by Clickspring at the DC Bureau.

So let me get this straight, you instantly recognise a BBC news studio as a BBC news studio. I’d say that was a triumph of branding, no?

The pictures that Derek took actually make the studio look a bit better, with the red wash across the floor. I guess they will want to show off the space in the first few weeks by having a high and wide angle but they could eventually have tighter shots.

Congratulations to @NickServini and @behnazakhgar who just broadcast the first lunchtime @BBCWalesToday from the new @bbcwales studios in #Cardiff in HD.
My turn this evening with @JenVaughanJones 🎥📺😁 pic.twitter.com/988iu9UmMR

— Derek Brockway - weatherman (@DerekTheWeather) September 28, 2020

Only one minor niggle, I'm not a fan of the sofa around the side of the desk for guests and correspondents. Should have gone for chairs and a seperate soft area.

The screens though look amazing and the weather map from them personally looked the most detailed from a HD plasma screen. (Edit: Behnaz told me it's 8K screens on Twitter).

I look forward to seeing how it works for the main bulletin.

Are the BBC Nations news programmes awarded the same budget in terms of technical resources as the English regions? If so I don't think there will be anything like AR deployed?

Given that the studio has a large window onto a daylight lit atrium, with daylight colour temperature light potentially hitting areas of the studio - I suspect the colour temperature they are lighting the studio to needs to be towards the daylight end of the range otherwise you'll end up with a mix of colour temperature light sources which is always a recipe for a problem. Sure you can make the 'cold daylight blue' a feature - but it isn't always a great solution. You can put CTO or similar on the windows - but that's not perfect either...

Most window studios I know of light to daylight colour temperature and then warm up the shots in the vision control area - rather than lighting them warm and having a mix of colour temperatures lighting people.

The BBC Wales studio also, presumably, has to provide a home to S4C's Newyddion (which is further away from the BBC News brand) so it will be interesting to see how the studio is used for that. I expect the black floor is a compromise to avoid overlay branding the studio one way or the other.

Doesn't The Nine usually have some kind of AR stuff going on with screens and the like?

I'm fairly sure they have in the past. However, I don't watch The Nine that often, so I'm not sure if they still do.

Massive wrap around screen then use an AR screen for the intro.

Oh my, that's a nice opening sequence on the 3 screens in the studio.