Minecraft Studio Builds

I saw the BBC TVC post and realised we’ve never really posted about our own little side project.

We have been working on some of our own Minecraft TV studio replicas. Primarily as a way of documenting these buildings before they are changed (or worse!).

We have put a lot of research into these fairly undocumented buildings, tracking down floor plans, architectural books, internal images, looking at aerial and street view and watching tv footage. Unfortunate demolition pictures have also helped us greatly.

Getting the proportions right with the limitations of Minecraft has been tricky, and this led us to create buildings with quite a large scale to help with the details. We didn't place these block by block - we laid out the floor plans and then built them up with various plugins.

Each studio has desk controlled lights from production galleries. You can control house lights and various banks of scenic lighting rigs all with separate switches.

There's some more pictures here https://imgur.com/a/vp3lJYC

Marco Polo House

This is our latest project, which we've nearly completed.







Central Studios, Lenton Lane
Again, built to the exact floor plan as the original.



Studio 7


Studio 8. Go wild in those aisles!


Other Builds

Gas Street


Maidstone


TV-am


Southampton



The London Studios

Wow! These are amazing, can you please post the minecraft maps for these builds?

Now this is impressive. Good on you guys for continuing the MC builds.

https://giphy.com/gifs/tODygE8KCqBzy/html5

Wow, these are pretty cool. Any chance I could check them out or even help?

Cool!
Any chance I could help with these, or have a download link(s) to the map(s)?

Mate this is extremely my kind of content, these are incredible builds, even not doing it manually. I'm blown away.

TVForum Minecraft Realm, anyone?

I have a Minecraft Realm we could use!

Thank you for the kind comments!

We put together a quick video demonstrating the atrium, working lifts, studio galleries and a very brief glimpse at the studios of Marco Polo house.

Must admit I wasn't familar with Marco Polo House until I saw this thread and other than it being the based of BSB not a huge amount of info out there about it other than it's now been torn down. Did BSkyB do much from there once they merged with BSB or just lease it to QVC. Did it have any larger studios or were they just the kind suitable for a shopping channel?

The site is actually made up of two buildings. Chelsea Bridge House and Marco Polo House. Stood in reception facing the elevators, Chelsea bridge house is on your left, Marco Polo on the right. Chelsea Bridge has 3 floors, Marco Polo has 4. Chelsea Bridge was used by The Observer, and ONdigital/ITV Digital. It also appears QVC must have used a portion of it, as an additional studio was added to the 1st floor which QVC used.

Dished! is a good book to read if you want to know more about BSB, the merger, and MPH. According to the book, the custom reception desks cost £80,000 between them!

BSB furnished their part of the building with furniture specified from Olivetti, designed by Ettore Sottsass. No expenses were spared. Here's a shot of the boardroom.


In terms of Sky's lease of the building, I'm not sure what the lease terms were, but it seems a strange coincidence that ONdigital leased Chelsea Bridge House.

QVC used 5 studios in the building. During BSB's tenure there were 2. The main studio that BSB and QVC used at MPH was 5,400 sq ft. For comparison, at Central's Lenton Lane the main studios were 7000 and 8000 sq ft.

I'm not entirely sure as to everything it was used for in the BSB days, but this looks like it was done there https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwOvRuNRP_Y

MPH is shown in this episode of Dreamspaces https://youtu.be/TdfbZOhTY84?t=103 (keep watching for a look at TV-am's studio 10 years after MTV had taken ownership - the Terry Farrell interior seems somewhat intact, just painted over.)

I'd recommend checking out the TV Studio History article on Marco Polo. http://www.tvstudiohistory.co.uk/independent%20tv%20studios.htm#marco%20polo

I recall ONDigital ended up with Chelsea Bridge/Marco Polo as BSkyB were part of the original consortium for British Digital Broadcasting, before they were kicked out due to competition regulations.