Text by Oliver Salway
Over the past few years, the design of studio sets for TV broadcast has been undergoing a technological revolution. These innovations may pave the way for the augmented realities we might soon inhabit off-screen too, what might become commonplace in the much heralded “metaverse”.
My own experience with TV set design dates back to 1999, when Softroom, the design studio I had co-founded, collaborated with the BBC’s then Imagineering department to create pioneering virtual sets. The first commission was for BBC Sport, to generate a new virtual environment for its flagship weekend sports show, Grandstand. An icon of the BBC’s output since 1958, Grandstand had employed many sets over the years, and by the late 1990s had switched to using full “greenscreen”, with just a physical desk for the presenters and guests and the ability to superimpose them on a static “fake” background.
Our design referenced the concept of a commentary space perched atop a stadium, with a strong structural expression to the virtual architecture, but the need to create a space that seemed plausible immediately highlighted a paradox inherent in the design of virtual spaces. In the virtual world, structure is meaningless, as there is no gravity for the “architecture” to resist, so there is no need to depict irrelevant structural elements such as beams and columns, or even staircases. Yet, unless you show something, there’s nothing to provide any sense of scale or depth.
Softroom was then asked by BBC Imagineering to create the virtual home of Nomy. She was ostensibly an intelligent search engine a decade ahead of Siri, for a web review show Hotlinks on digital channel BBC Choice that first aired in 2000. Here, we had free rein to drop the troubling emulation of physical spaces and go for something “purer” to the logic of the virtual world, where elements can be paper thin. We created a series of shell-like video layers, that could be flexibly revealed in the production process, to reveal anything from a virtual 3D library to a digital garden.
Yet, despite its cyber logic, I do now question whether this approach really had any superior claims to authenticity. Once you move past the realism of an undecorated studio, you’re inevitably in the world of theatricality and stagecraft, where every approach is essentially equally as valid as any other. There will be no fixed “truth” in this new visual age.
The technology wasn’t really there 20 years ago. Everything seemed like a pale simulation of what a virtual world one day could be, when the technology eventually matured – and now it has. So my personal interest in designing for broadcast media has been reignited by the “virtual production” revolution currently taking place in set design.
The game-changer in terms of TV set design today has, appropriately enough, come from the world of video gaming. The arms race of game developers has been to create virtual worlds of ever increasing realism and complexity within which the action takes place. This has been enabled in part by an exponential increase in the power of lightning-fast graphical processor units (GPUs) in PCs and games consoles, and the software “game engines” that exploit them. These extraordinary algorithms allow for billions of visual data points wrapped in photo-realistic “textures” to be flung around in real time by the gamers – and in turn now by television directors and set designers under the banner of “virtual production”.
For set design, these virtual-production tools allow for three major innovations. First is the ability to completely replace the physical set with a fully three-dimensional virtual environment that moves in perfectly synchronised perspective with the camera. Coupled with a greenscreen studio, actors and presenters (the “talent”), as well as some physical props for them to sit on or interact with, can be blended in real-time with a virtual space running in the game engine, creating a mixed-reality hybrid. The realms of the TV set designer and the games designer are merging ever closer, and it’s not unusual to see artists moving freely between the twin disciplines.
A step on from this is to surround the talent with LED panels that can display a dynamic virtual environment around them in real time, so they get the feeling of being immersed in the virtual space as they perform. It’s not without technical limitations, but the what-you-see-is-what-you-get approach means that the talent can properly interact with their environment. Plus, unlike greenscreen, the lighting from the LED displays falls onto the talent, and any reflections seen in costumes and props are accurate to the scene. Real-time sets designed this way encourage playful experimentation on the part of directors that no post-production can ever achieve.
Also, thanks to the magic of virtual production, remote guests can be overlaid in the correct position in real time on the LED video walls inside the studio. It offers an important advantage for the remote contributors in that they are given an equality of representation by being “within the studio”, as opposed to being “outsiders” to the studio discussions. It’s a new paradigm in terms of the relationship between the fortress-like TV studio and the “civilian” world beyond.
The ability to “teleport” in remote contributors raises its own interesting questions in terms of the power dynamics of the studio. For one, where are they meeting? Do I come to your house or do you come to mine? Or do we meet in neutral virtual space? And, though gaining popularity in sports shows, does this kind of clever “fakery” undermine a crucial sense of authenticity if it’s used in news presentation?
I think it’s acceptable so long as you’re upfront about what’s being done. Perhaps you introduce a “halo” panel behind the remote guest, clearly stating where they’re being beamed in from, like the golden discs you see behind the heads of saints on medieval altarpieces, that clearly denote who is “holy”. I think of it as “honest magic”, and maybe this is the sort of visual shorthand we may come to expect in the metaverse.
The other key innovation of virtual production is the ability to digitally extend the physical set beyond the dimensional constraints of the studio itself, for example, allowing a loftier virtual ceiling to be inserted over the studio’s lighting grid, or a view to the football stadium beyond.
The ability to extend the set limitlessly does, however, risk creating an expectation of a certain overblown grandeur of volume. In terms of scale, bigger is not always better, and the largest (often virtual) spaces can appear overly extravagant, or even unintentionally comic, particularly when occupied by a sole anchor presenter. It’s rather like the absurd spectacle of a lone despot seated at the opposite end of a vast meeting table to his minions. There is a fine balance to be struck between a suitably authoritative setting and a sense of human scale and intimacy, something budding metaverse creators would be wise to consider.
In a different vein of responsibility, all new design must inevitably consider and respond to issues of the environmental emergency, and TV sets are no exception. In comparison to the wider field of architecture and interior design, though, the relatively small scale and extent of TV studios as a whole mean that their carbon footprint is comparatively modest, regardless of how luxuriously they are fitted out. It makes little difference on a global scale if the flooring of a TV studio is sustainably sourced timber or digitally printed wood-effect vinyl. There just aren’t that many of them.
However, despite its limited physical scope, TV has a disproportionate reach in terms of communicating aspirations and values. So while a TV set constructed from sustainable materials won’t make much of a dent in terms of global carbon reduction, the message in terms of eco-consciousness that it can send to all quadrants of the globe could be immense.
Another facet of sustainability in relation to the virtual world is a sneaking suspicion I have that the virtual worlds of TV sets and the metaverse may become a final resting ground of architectural expressionism. As real-world structures need to become ever less profligate in their consumption of resources, could these spaces be a legitimate outlet for all that thwarted creativity? That’s assuming we can justify the power consumption of the server farms and graphics processors needed to conjure them into existence.
Despite the digital innovations, broadcast TV today is under siege from social media. TV’s former all-encompassing power is being undermined by a myriad of new sources, often more highly favoured by younger generations. For one thing, its landscape-format imagery is now at odds with the predominantly portrait format of social media – driven by the natural way to hold a smartphone in one hand – and the two make uncomfortable bedfellows. However, a new trend is emerging with the integration of large portrait-format LED screens on set, specifically included to allow for the display of social-media feeds on air – if you can’t beat ’em, subjugate ’em.
A far bigger threat to the TV set itself looms on the horizon in the form of augmented reality (AR). If the holy-grail promise of lightweight, slim and transparent AR glasses comes to pass (and it’s still a bit of an “if”), there may not be any requirement for set construction at all, either physical or virtual. Unlike virtual-reality headsets that remove you from your surroundings and plunge you into an entirely different space, AR just overlays virtual elements onto the environment that surrounds you. AR won’t have the brightness needed to block out your surroundings and replace them with a virtual setting (unless you’re sitting in the dark or staring at a super-black wall). Yet despite this apparent limitation, if these devices become ubiquitous and something we wear all day, they may become the de facto conduit for information and entertainment.
Fast forward to the world of AR and it’s not hard to imagine that broadcasters might not bother to transmit a studio-based set at all. Instead they would just send a component feed of the talent as cut-out figures that the AR glasses would then insert real-scale into your own environment. The floating news anchor, devoid of the desk or set that underwrites their authority, becomes a widget on your AR glasses’ “home screen”. As a viewer you would be able to place them life size in the middle of your living room, or diminish them to the periphery of your vision. And with that, it won’t just be the nature of set design that will be up for re-evaluation, but the entire field of broadcasting as we have known it for nearly a hundred years. ◉
All images designed by Softroom 1999-2021
