BBC News output underwent a comprehensive re-brand by Lambie Nairn in the spring of 2008. My contributions to this were the animated studio backdrops that played out in the Barco screens along three sides of the two studios. Working on the designs through my company, Lightwell and in collaboration with Jago Design (now BDA Set Design), we developed a digital environment comprising a newsroom backed by offices, galleries, control rooms and various ancillary spaces. The scene, along with animated characters, lifts and monitors was delivered in kit form and assembled by BBC News Graphics who applied the final blur effect along with the etched glass graphic effect.
The space depicted in the backdrops is almost entirely self-enclosed apart from views through to small exterior courtyard and atrium spaces on each of the three sides. We had planned to use similar lighting for both the day and night-time versions of the scene. Different times of day would be indicated by changes to the lighting in those exterior zones and by switching off lighting in parts of the interior. Studio tests immediately revealed that this only produced dark patches from certain camera angles within the studio. We also soon realised (though it seems blatantly obvious with hindsight) that our scene could never go darker than the material surface of the screens, which in turn were being hit by quantities of diffuse spill light from the ceiling light boxes and lighting grid that resulted in a grey tone in place of blacks. I was stuck for ideas and with the re-launch fast approaching, set about experimenting with different lighting levels and different coloured lighting. Nothing was working as we had planned.
By late February 2008, we were short of time and in need of inspiration when, one morning during the school half term holiday my son started watching Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers. I walked into the room just as the scenes of the night battle were beginning. There on the screen was the solution I had been searching for.
Studying this particular scene revealed a tightly controlled, silver-blue monochrome palette. The only exceptions to this came from the yellow/gold accents of the flaming torches. Borrowing this idea, I applied a similar lighting palette to the newsroom backdrops – it worked. We achieved a sufficiently well-lit interior, maintained similar levels of detail and texture to the daytime scene, but described a night-time condition throughout. Studio tests resulted in a sequence of refinements to the hue and contrast levels, but ultimately we had arrived at the final solution for our lighting design through a chance viewing of a scene from a movie being watched by a kid on his school holidays. I am a huge fan of serendipity.
The final night-time version of this digital set is below. The blue hue acquired a shade more red, whilst being slightly more saturated. The yellow/gold accents are similarly more saturated and bold.
The designs I prepared were only ever expected to last a couple of years and were to be superseded, not by an updated design, but by a whole new building, studios and headquarters at Broadcasting House in central London. In the event, this stop-gap design has, in various incarnations been in use for five years. Reports on the web suggest that on Monday 18th March, all BBC News will come from the new studios at Broadcasting House.
Lucky for me that it has lasted this long, it meant that I got a design on-screen in a James Bond film as some BBC news footage appears in a scene from Skyfall! I wrote a little more on this in an earlier post, BBC News makes an appearance in a Bond film
For more information, visit my company’s website – lightwell