Coronation Street

They'd never be able to do that even when the outdoor set is life size, owing to the TARDIS-like nature of many of the buildings!

The Rovers would actually stretch into the Medical Centre and half way down Rosamund Street if the indoor proportions were reflected externally.

Not as bad as it used to be when the Rovers had 3 separate bars!

Will we ever see the back room again?

Its 130% (broadly a third bigger) than the size it currently is - to make it life size.

You wouldn't want to film in "real" houses, as they have walls in all the places you want your cameras to go. Brookside got round this by having massive holes in their walls covered by large pictures and wardrobes etc.

A studio gives you infinitely more control over lighting (shooting night time scenes), placement of cameras ("wild" walls in studios are ones which can be moved out of the way to let camera and other apparatus where they need to be) and sound (real rooms with walls and ceilings have a tendency to echo).

A studio also allows them to quickly set up the next scene - and not carry the equipment into the next "house".

What they could do (and I hope they do) is to run a scene from the street into one of the houses, perhaps finishing a scene in the hallway on on the stairs. Then they would cut away to a studio shot.



Err, hyperbole much?

Yep. Brookside was infamous for dreadful sound quality when it first launched because of the 'real' nature of its location - as was Eldorado (which also used 'real' locations)

Many 'back lot' locations for soaps are much shallower than required for real houses - as they often only need a small amount of space behind the front doors and front windows (and are much shallower than a real house would be to save space)

thanks for the explanations, I know the current corry set is scaled down as I saw when I visited, the inside doors from the halls open out almost onto the windows of what would be the back rooms and the pitch of the roof is steeper as well side the depth is shallower


will be very interesting to watch the progression of this new set when it does get built

I wonder how many people would notice the difference once the new set has been seen on screen for the first time?

I think the press will trumpet the first on screen appearance - didn't they do the same in '82, what with the Queen opening it?

At the moment they tend to frame the street shots either by looking down it (which hides the actual length), or in medium shots on doorways as people enter and exit the houses.

You can compare this to the set of River City - which is life size, and encompasses a few streets, shops etc. They can have a "walk and talk" scene from the pub to someone's door, and it takes a good few minutes to do it. No slightly awkward stopping in the middle to pad it out...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/38180000/jpg/_38180696_soapset300.jpg

They have the usual run of cars, mini buses and black cabs puttering about in the background of the scene as Corrie, but the scale of the place really does make it look much more realistic.

Hopefully the increase in scale will add to the realism in Weatherfield.

Was the Channel 5 soap 'Family Affairs' filmed on a set with scaled down buildings, or actual size?

Outdoor scenes were filmed at the back of the area used for 'The Bill' at Merton Studios in South London, which doesn't seem to be awash with space.

It's difficult to tell from Virtual Earth.

http://i51.tinypic.com/2dhb28i.jpg

Interesting poll on ATV
http://www.atvtoday.co.uk/index.php?option=com_poll&id=2:best-soap-bang-of-2010

Well the CA before tonight's episode certainly dropped a bollock announcing the return of Tracy didn't he...

that's tomorrow

very silly storyline, would somebody inside for murder really be realeased if that happened in reality