The new NEW Central West and BBC Midlands thread

Yes.

The plan makes the studio look bigger than the window look seemed.

Which direction was the current set up in? Were the screens in front of the window, behind the gallery or against the side?

I never realised that a big chunk of the window was covered by the rear projection screen. Presumably technology would allow more of the space to be used revealing more of the window backdrop.

The left-hand wall (from the viewer at home's perspective) of the 2012-2017 set was covering up the studio's real window. Thus ironically covering up a real newsroom view with a CGI one!

Originally, that left-hand side part of the CGI office incorporated a view of the Brum skyline "outside" of its CGI windows. It was a view of some tall city centre buildings (such as the Rotunda and the BT tower), seen from a vantage point quite some distance away from the city centre with leafy suburbs in the foreground. It was therefore quite similar to the live Pebble Mill rooftop camera view used in the early-2000s sets' "windows".

I believe that it was a still photograph as opposed to moving footage. I think they only ever took one such photo (in daylight hours), with idealised versions of dusk/night etc being digitally created from that.

At some point they later updated that left-hand part of the CGI environment to be entirely indoor-looking, with no outdoor view seen in the distance anymore. AIUI, the updated CGI side view closely mimicked the layout of the real newsroom view that exists beyond the very window that this section of set was covering up! Madness.

I thought they had managed to do a whole late bulletin without any illuminated signs from the restaurants in shot tonight, but then they did the weather and Rebecca Wood had them all behind her instead.

Recorded the Mayor debate to watch at the weekend so not seen any of the presentation yet apart from the title sequence that Midlands Today tweeted and I posted above.

Initially there was a panoramic view videoed by Jim Mann of Lightwell, taken from the Frankley reservoir of early morning, day and dusk and night - however as the set graphics were changed it was obscured. Jim filmed around 1 hour of each setting which was looped in the background of the false newsroom

While we broadcast from our temporary home overlooking the canal, work is progressing rapidly on our brand new studio. Here's a timelapse pic.twitter.com/bxgvzWgXeH

— BBC Midlands Today (@bbcmtd) April 20, 2017

Judging by this we are going for a BBC London News style studio?

Love the pause for a tea break midway through the video!

Hard to tell if the Newsroom is going to reappear based on that. Although a tweet from David Gregory-Kumar suggests that it might be.

Amazed that nobody has tweeted to correct Midlands Today that they're getting a new set not a new studio

I can't work out what orientation we're dealing with in that timelapse video.

If the real window is directly behind the perspective that we're looking from there, then it almost certainly won't form any part of the on-air look of the programme (i.e. the camera crew would have their backs to the real window). But a set orientated that way round would be great for visitors to the Public Space to look in and see the set from the same perspective as they would if watching on the telly (albeit with the back of the studio cameras in the foreground).

Alternatively... if any of the black walls that we can see in that timelapse are in fact a black curtain temporarily pulled across the real window during the refit, then the real window may form at least part of the view seen through the panoramic "window" gaps in those new set walls (but perhaps with a fake CGI newsroom or similar filling other parts of the panorama?).

Since the 2012 set change, you've basically only been able to see the rear face of the set's left-hand wall when looking through the real window from the newsroom side. Which is pretty crap for visitors to the Public Space - who are also only able to see into the studio at all from fairly oblique angles anyway (via a newsroom/Public Space window which is perpendicular to the studio/newsroom one).

The window is to the left of the camera in that video. The previous set had its back wall along the one we can see there.

Based on the plan posted above, the real window is the wall on the left. The wallbox is visible to the right of the photo of the revealed window too.