ITV News

I'm mildly curious (and not much more than that) why they are using CG to insert those yellow panels on the desk.

Perhaps its got something to do with not being able to accurately match the rather "electronic" saturated colour by any other practical means, thereby helping to tie the physical desk with the virtual environment.

In any event, I think the look sucks, I really do.

They have this super-sophisticated keying and virtual reality setup, and then they're forced to use it to resolve a yellow and black set - which makes it look like the ragged-edged CSO techniques of the 1980s.

Its no ridiculous I can't bring myself to watch it.

I agree, Gavin, it seems to be an extravagant waste of such a tool when almost the same result could've been achieved with a real set and some Barco screens for the areas where they place images for the items.

I almost get the impression that the CG yellow squares on the desk are there simply because 'they can do it' and for no other practical reason. I suspect that having realised how bad they appear in moving shots which reveal the edge of the desk, they have shied away from such camera angles.

The yellow doesn't actually shout "ITV1" at me anyway: it reminds me of the old ITN colouring of the 1980/90s, which is no bad thing, but not what they were aiming for!

I can tell everyone that the yellow squares on the desk are keyed because natural yellow appears as peach with Ultimatte.

Now everyone can stop guessing about the yellow squares ok

Can you please explain what 'Ultimatte' is?

The panels appear as yellow when lit from behind on the desks in the regional sets.

Ultimatte is the brand name of a proprietary hardware/software based CSO solution. It is sensitive enough to cope with fine hair, smoke, liquid - all the things that might make can make a less sophisticated system look unsatisfactory.

It uses a slightly different tone of green/blue (you can purchase paint, tape and fabrics calibrated to work with this system).

In essence it's a really good CSO system, and usually fools unsuspecting viewers - unless you want to do poor things with it like the current ITV news set.

Presumably only when you are using green as your key colour and need to cope with quite a wide acceptance hue and luminance level of greens? I don't think that all Ultimatte implementations have that limitation - just ones that have to be quite versatile day-to-day ? (Yellow has a lot of green in it I guess)

I guess it also allows you to change the desk colour virtually as well?

Pardon my supreme ignorance, but why can't they just have a "real" desk, made from wood or steel or plastic or anything? This concept if virtual desks is mindboggling.

James

Yep - was an analogue system for many years (there was an HD analogue version around in the late 80s/early 90s) and is now also available in software and digital hardware.

Very powerful system that allows for transparency (though doesn't do refraction obviously) - so you can do things like blow bubbles, and has some very clever hue-suppression and additive mixing algorithms. It also allows real shadows to be keyed, which can be very clever.

CSO and regular chroma key implementations are usually hard edged background / foreground switches - sometimes with a secondary key to allow for a basic shadow key as well and some colour correction/coarse hue suppression to avoid auras.

Ultimatte has far more subtlety and works much more cleverly than a hard switch.

Thanks for the explanation, Gavin & noggin.

West/Westcountry has today received the 'yellow peril' treatment.

http://www.gorillaenterprises.co.uk/upload/uploadFiles/ITVNews-Regional-241109-1c.jpg http://www.gorillaenterprises.co.uk/upload/uploadFiles/ITVNews-Regional-241109-2.jpg http://www.gorillaenterprises.co.uk/upload/uploadFiles/ITVNews-Regional-241109-3.jpg

It is a real desk, they've just overlayed some colour panels on it to match the set.

But in answer to your question, you could have a very basic green coloured box for them to sit at, and create a desk, with a "reflective" glass top in the 3D environment.

Why? Because it may be cheaper to do it that way for a one-off. In the case of a news programme or other daily live show, I wouldn't give myself such a headache and potential for problems, so I'd build the real thing.

A double dose of Mark and Julie tonight. They're doing both 6.30 and 10pm.

Veering off topic for a moment. Last night's I'm A Celebrity helped to lift News at Ten to 4.3m, closing the gap between it and the BBC's Ten to just 600,000. NaT has been improving in ratings since the revamp - gradually - but it certainly will be interesting to see whether or not they maintain these recent viewing figures after I'm A Celebrity finishes it's run.

As for the new look. It has grown on me a lot since I first saw it, especially the music, though the last News at Ten set surpasses the current one. It was a lovely mix between old style and modern. I can't help feeling that this new look would look a little better if the yellow parts of the set were made gold. Is there any need for one of the newscasters to stand up for a few seconds at the start of the News at 6.30/Ten? And I thought they'd left that silly habit of putting The Sun-style text on the headline sequence behind them.