It makes a change from London and the South in general.
Have you seen the botch job of South Today recently? Most(all) of the set is from the 99 revamp with some paint and bits cut out. Dodgy short edited titles, way out of date straps and general miss masheyness.
And I'm sooooo glad regions have gone the way of London, the current graphics/titles look so poor in comparison to its predecessors and now WNT.
That said, I LOVE the new WNT stuff, I can't wait for all the regions to adopt a similar style, It'll be nice to have a 99 era nationwide corporate look.
Was the fact it was filmed in HD necessary? I can't really see regional news programmes upgrading to HD at least before another rebrand.
I suspect it was done for a different reason than to be used in HD but as has been said so they can be better used with post production effects etc. If you look at the "filming of the titles" video you can see there is no panning of the camera, but there is in the titles. So they've obviously "zoomed" in on the picture then panned it, which with SD footage would mean a quality drop, but as its originally HD the zooming only bring it down to a SD/HD hybrid which would look more than ok once rendered.
I must say I'm quite impressed with the new look having watched it a number of times (via the YouTube link - want to tune in and watch properly one night!). I'm not sure about the LIVE NEWS/LOCAL NEWS text and what they've done with the BBC Blocks isn't strictly kosher (but then the people that make the rules seem to ignore them all the time so I cn hardly blame Manchester). I think the royal blue is maybe a bit strong and vibrant. As for the floor, well black shiny floors was very in a few years ago (I think BBC Choice's incarnation of Liquid News had one... might be wrong on that). Famously in these parts, Bristol, one of the first regions to ditch the Lambie-Nairn beige set, reused BBC Three News' set and initially had a black shiny floor. It looked every bit as lumpy and bumpy as Oxford Road's and frankly didn't last long. ISTR they found great difficulty in lighting the presenters flatteringly as a surprising amount of warmth was reflected back up from the wood floors they took out. Funnily enough ... they've now got a painted wood effect thing going on again.
Finally looking at the end of NWT on YouTube I'm
delighted
to see a Lights Down returning on the pull out - fabulous!
I like the new titles, apart fromk the patronising 'Live news, etc' which cheapens the look, and the music is rather bland. The way the circle bends to show the title at the end is smart. The floor looks awful, and someone needs to tell Ranvir that she doesn't have to shout. We definitely have the best regional look though now.
So are all regions going to get identical sets again?
I was going to ask the same question - if the regions are all going to follow suit, will they all have sufficient studio-floor space to re-create the same look/style as NWT?
I would like to see the same set format on Look North Leeds (as I detest the current set), but the floor space in their new studio seems smaller than in the old building (could somebody confirm?) and I wonder if they would be able to fit in both desk & sofa/soft areas.
Agree with others that the new look to NWT is great overall & look forward to other regional changes.
I also have appreciated the information of the changes on their website (but they still need to change the website masthead to reflect the new look) - as someone not in the industry but very interested in TV presentation esp in News & Current Affairs, I often find it difficult to source info, TV Forum not withstanding!
As good as Gordon is, I'm looking forward to Friday (if the rumours are true) and seeing Stuart/Kate presenting the evening bulletin. Stuart is very good at presenting 'hard news' but he has a good sense of humour for the lighter news towards the end of the programme. I remember him presenting a special episode one night - think it was focusing on the analysis of the cockling deaths when Lin Liang Ren was found guilty and Stuart covered it very well. He's rarely presented the news this year since Ranvir took over as the second choice, but back in 2005 he was usually the second choice (sometimes alternating with Annabel).
Could anyone tell me the locations of the previous titles? I know they used Blackpool South Shore (showing the senior citizens) along with Jodrell Bank but where were the other titles located at?
(ie. footballers running through the park, man walking the dog, the kids paddling in the sea, the bridge, girls in town..)