BBC Virtual Studio 1993-1999

And geeky fact for the day....its 14 years to the day since that set first appeared!

I remember the 1993 virtual look and I always liked it. It was a shame they didn't experiment it more, having more virtual graphics and perhaps a standing up presentation like ITV News at present.

It would be great to have something similar back on BBC News. You never know, when the eventaully move into their new BBC News Headquarters at Broadcasting House, this might be the new look.

Since they only introduced the present sets which I feel looks alright but not very interesting, last year, we probably have another 3 years of the current set. Shame!

When they move they should give studio space to CBBC and Cbeebies.

The Current set already looks dated.
I Think a view from a REAL window out across London would be nice

The point was that it WASN'T virtual - and there wasn't actually that much space to stand up - remember that there were two very big desks in the studio (One for Business Breakfast, the other for Breakfast, One, Six and Nine)

Yes exactly. The asthetics of how the 'set' actually looked is one thing, but the technology involved in producing it (and what you were limited in doing with it) was simply lightyears behind proper virtual studios nowadays.

Does anyone have a foto of how the dry set looked? (i.e. the actual desk and backdrop, without the virtual additions)

A link to the BBC Engineering Journal is on page one of this thread, but there seems to be a problem with the link. Fortunately I had copied the document (as you do) and here are the pics:

http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/realnews.gif

http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/realnews2.gif

Sorry about the quality, apparantly the documents was a very old paper version which had recently been scanned.

Hey, thanks Stuart. Appreciated. However, I do not see much difference in the photographs above from what I used to see on screen when I watched those programmes years ago.

Still, I think it was one of the best ever BBC News sets.

This is what I'm confused about. The studio when altered by a computer looks like this:

http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/realnews2.gif

But I thought it looked like this:

http://www.tvwhirl.co.uk/images/bbcnews1996.jpg

What's the difference?

There may have been two closing angles. I'm sure it sometimes closed with a dead-centre caption, and other times it closed with the caption flushed to the right with the cut-glass newswall in view.

In the shots above, the arc length of the desk is around fifteen or twenty meters, approximately. But, most of that is due to visual graphic effects.

In reality, minus all the additional computer wizardry, IIRC, the actual arc length of the desk was no more than 5 metres, with the two anchors (in the case of the Six) actually huddled quite close together, against a plain blue curtain-wall background.

It is of the above "real" scenario that I am hoping someone will be able to post some captures. (The fotos above are still virtualised.)

Actually, the photo of Martin Lewis that includes a camera and monitor, is entirely unvirtualised. It shows that the real desk is bigger than perhaps you imagined it to be. When Breakfast News was based in that studio, you needed to fit a couple of news presenters, a sports presenter, and possibly another studio guest, all simultaneously. So, yes, the desk was genuinely big.

The Nine O'Clock News - with the virtualised grabs seen above - was typically less busy, and (in common with all the shows in that style) the only bit of the desk that was actually "real" in those virtual scenes was the bit where the two main presenters sat. (In the Breakfast News scenario, you might have four people sitting behind the desk, but only two appearing in the virtual wide-shot, because the others were all cropped out of the composite. Luckily, it didn't ruin the illusion!)

Oh, and the "angled" closing sequence, with the offset copyright, belonged to the Six O'Clock News, which had a large virtual glass BBC crest on the left of frame, leaving a gap on the right for the copyright information. The Nine, as seen here, was centred up.

A clever system, that worked seamlessly. You'd be hard-pressed to duplicate it, these days, with automated gizmos and server-based doodahs.