NG
Nope - I was entirely underwhelmed. NRK's in-house creation in Oslo was much more flexible and interesting - and didn't depend on acres of LED to be impressive. It also gave the jibs, cranes and steadicams more stuff to work with.
I only watched the first hour (who scheduled the first episode of Apprentice up against this? And incidentally, how did BBC HD cope with the overrun, as they were supposed to have You're Fired on at Ten?), so maybe it suddenly became better after that, but from what I saw it was effectively a giant LED screen with a massive stage (about 5 miles from the audience) plonked in front of it. There didn't seem to be any elements to make it any more interesting, and with a large number of shots being MCU's from halfway down the arena at the same height as the performers meaning you just get this horrible 2D picture - there's no depth to it at all.
Yep - far too much long lens stuff.
Then there were the problems with lots of shots being at the right distance from the LED wall to cause moire-ing on my TV (it's 720p, so the downscaling could be causing this), which looked bad at best.
I also didn't like the "heart beat" when coming back from the postcards. The lighting never seemed synced to the audio, and I definitely prefer to come back to a nice dark arena before the song starts.
Didn't like the heartbeat audio - sounded like the intro to the song.
The stage doesn't look that good - it's far too big with that surround, and the walkways up to the back looked like a bit of an after thought. And what was with all the lumps of perspex just chucked on the surround? They looked like they were there to duct the low smoke, but surely they could have dropped them in on the required songs rather than be there all the time?
Finally, who on earth was thinking "oh, we haven't got any movement in this shot, right, lets get the camera to pan a bit then zoom out, then pan back and zoom in, then repeat that until we cut away".
Not enough moving cameras used properly - too much dependency on fixed cameras, too far away.
On the other hand, when the LEDs were working, on a decent choice of shot, it looked lovely. As were the tracking shots from high up in the grid. And the arena overall looked nicer than previous years, so it's not all bad.
The lighting was excellent. The close-up shot, taken relatively close to the performers, with LEDs massively out of focus looked lovely. But definitely not a patch on NRK.
noggin
Founding member
So just me who didn't like the set then?
Nope - I was entirely underwhelmed. NRK's in-house creation in Oslo was much more flexible and interesting - and didn't depend on acres of LED to be impressive. It also gave the jibs, cranes and steadicams more stuff to work with.
Quote:
I only watched the first hour (who scheduled the first episode of Apprentice up against this? And incidentally, how did BBC HD cope with the overrun, as they were supposed to have You're Fired on at Ten?), so maybe it suddenly became better after that, but from what I saw it was effectively a giant LED screen with a massive stage (about 5 miles from the audience) plonked in front of it. There didn't seem to be any elements to make it any more interesting, and with a large number of shots being MCU's from halfway down the arena at the same height as the performers meaning you just get this horrible 2D picture - there's no depth to it at all.
Yep - far too much long lens stuff.
Quote:
Then there were the problems with lots of shots being at the right distance from the LED wall to cause moire-ing on my TV (it's 720p, so the downscaling could be causing this), which looked bad at best.
I also didn't like the "heart beat" when coming back from the postcards. The lighting never seemed synced to the audio, and I definitely prefer to come back to a nice dark arena before the song starts.
Didn't like the heartbeat audio - sounded like the intro to the song.
Quote:
The stage doesn't look that good - it's far too big with that surround, and the walkways up to the back looked like a bit of an after thought. And what was with all the lumps of perspex just chucked on the surround? They looked like they were there to duct the low smoke, but surely they could have dropped them in on the required songs rather than be there all the time?
Finally, who on earth was thinking "oh, we haven't got any movement in this shot, right, lets get the camera to pan a bit then zoom out, then pan back and zoom in, then repeat that until we cut away".
Not enough moving cameras used properly - too much dependency on fixed cameras, too far away.
Quote:
On the other hand, when the LEDs were working, on a decent choice of shot, it looked lovely. As were the tracking shots from high up in the grid. And the arena overall looked nicer than previous years, so it's not all bad.
The lighting was excellent. The close-up shot, taken relatively close to the performers, with LEDs massively out of focus looked lovely. But definitely not a patch on NRK.
