the
channel
|
37
On the 2nd of February this year Britain’s ITN unveiled a new set –
and a new look for its ITV news services. It was a relaunch to make
our news coverage more dynamic, engaging and appealing to our
viewers.We wanted it to be bold and modern.We wanted to be noticed
but we didn’t want to be brash. Above all, we wanted a set that would
lead the way.
Focus groups had told us that the old set looked outdated. So we
wanted to create a new set using the latest technology that would
convey the drama and excitement of television news. We wanted our
programmes to show a bigger window on the world. And so we
embarked on a relaunch the scale of which had never been tried before.
Rather than simply creating a new type of conventional studio with a
news wall in it, we created a news wall that
is
the studio. A 22 metre
long, 3 metre high living wall of pictures that can be filled with any
images on any story that we chose. It’s our ‘theatre for news’, a blank
canvas which we can fill with pictures and sound from around the
world. But we can use the wall for much more; to deconstruct stories
using graphics and facts; we can use the scale of the wall to allow us
to zoom into picture, to pick out and slow-mo images and to enlarge
details we want to focus on. And, we can dress the set during
interviews or for entire special programmes – like the budget.
The set is a groundbreaking mixture of virtual reality and reality. To
help with the virtual reality, we brought in the digital graphics company,
VizRT, who worked with us to develop a sophisticated virtual reality
system.We had already worked with them creating a 3D virtual reality
House of Commons for the 2001 General Election. We also called
the engineering, technical and design expertise within ITN, to build
the complete VR set from scratch, testing what it would look like and
how we could make it work. The wall fills the whole studio backdrop
and allows us to beam any picture, series of pictures or graphics
sequence onto it. We can split the wall into four to bring in different
elements of a story. This technology enables our presenters in the
studio to walk along the length of the wall through a sequence of
images and links to reporters in the field.
The hugely ambitious nature of the wall brought with it a set of
challenges for our teams of directors, technical directors, editors and
presenters. Our use of virtual reality means that there is no stock
background shot that we can cut to, so we have to make sure we
keep the wall filled with images all the time. We can’t cut to a
background shot of the studio – there isn’t one. And we needed to
find a way to help our presenters navigate around the studio and the
images used on the wall. So, we devised a system that back projects
the images through the screen that allows the presenters to see an
outline version of the pictures that are broadcast. It was put to
particularly good use on the day of the budget. Presenter Mary
Nightingale introduced the programme in front of moving graphics
which outlined the main points of the budget. As she slowly walked
along the length of the wall, the graphics changed behind her – the
pictures illustrating and emphasising the words. At the end of the
graphics sequence, the presenter moved a further few paces along
the wall to cross live to ITV political editor Nick Robinson at the Houses
of Parliament for his analysis of the budget.
The studio is highly technically advanced. It is equipped with five
cameras. One camera is fixed and the other four – one of which is
a jib – are moveable. Having a jib has transformed movement in the
programme, allowing us to show the dimensions and scale of the
set to its full advantage. The camera movement is tracked in 3
dimensions using the Radamec Freed system. The VizRt software
allows us 2 full bandwidth transmission channels plus 3 lower quality
preview channels. Two transmission channels allow us to mix
ing the set
