Virtual TV studios - the future of set design?
Over the past few years, the design of studio sets for TV broadcast has been undergoing a technological revolution, which maybe paves the way for the augmented realities we might soon inhabit off-screen too. The innovations afoot are worth a bit of scrutiny as they stand at the vanguard of what might become commonplace in the much heralded ‘metaverse’. But what are the new rules of the game and what does the future hold for set design?
A version of this article was originally published in the Autumn 2022 issue of Tank Magazine.
My own experience with TV set design dates back to 1999, when Softroom, the design studio I 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 their flagship weekend show, Grandstand. An icon of the BBC’s output since 1958, Grandstand had employed many sets over the years, and by the late ‘90s 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 highlights a paradox inherent in the design of virtual sets. For, 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. However, unless you show something, there’s nothing left to provide any sense of scale or depth.
Softroom were 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. Here, we had free reign 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. This led to our creating a series of shell-like video layers, that could be flexibly revealed in the production process, to create 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.
But the technology wasn’t really there twenty 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 that is currently taking place in set design. And it’s something I’ve been investigating in recent work on sports and news studio concepts.
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 PC’s and games consoles, and the software ‘game engines’ that exploit them such as ‘Unity’ and Epic Games’ ‘Unreal Engine’. 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 key 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 space can also be ‘augmented’ with elements that can be convincingly inserted in front of the talent, again moving in true perspective with the camera.
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 falling from the LED displays 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 real-time on the LED video walls inside the studio, appearing to the camera that they are situated within the space alongside the talent on set. It offers an important advantage for the remote contributors in that they are given an equality of representation by seemingly appearing ‘within the studio’, as opposed to being ‘outsiders’ to the studio discussions relegated to being a talking head on a monitor screen or zoom call. It’s a new paradigm in terms of the relationship between the fortress-like TV studio and the ‘civilian’ world beyond.
But 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 something like news presentation?
I personally 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 altarpiece paintings, 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.
Another major 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 football stadium beyond.
But the ability to extend the set limitlessly, risks creating an expectation of a certain overblown grandeur of scale. Bigger is not always better, and can even be unintentionally comic, particularly when a giant virtual set is occupied by a sole anchor presenter, looking like a lonely despot in a villains lair. 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. However, in comparison to the wider field of architecture and interior design, 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.
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, can 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 virtual 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. But 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, 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.
If these devices become ubiquitous and something we wear all day, they may end up as the de facto conduit for information and entertainment. But will AR broadcasters bother to transmit a set at all? Instead you just send a component feed of the talent as cut-out figures that the AR glasses can insert real-scale into your own environment.
Perhaps 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 can at-will place them life size in the middle of your living room, or diminish them to the periphery of your vision. But by that time, it’s not just the nature of set design that will be up for re-evaluation, but the entire field of broadcasting as we have known it.