News 24 LIVE & Location problem

I'm always trying to solve this as I think that the way that they do it now, just bunging it untidily in the top left, ruins the whole look of the graphics.

How's about this for a try. It'd need some big changes to the software as the Tower would need to move up and down as the main strap does now, but I think having everything together in the one TOG block makes it so much neater, and doesn't cover any more of the screen up (if fact less!)...

The ticker header has gone - you'll see why in a mo...
http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/1_copy1.jpg


The Tower slips down to cover a bit of the ticker, and the strap would temporarily cover the story details bit to allow the location to be shown...
http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/2.jpg

Here's how the reporter would be dealt with...
http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/3.jpg

And once the location had been made clear, the main strap could move back up for the details line to be shown...
http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/4.jpg

One other thing. Looking at the above shot with the reporter and the recorded shot, as usual surrounded by acres of black (or blue, or white, as all channels do it) I ask myself why? They could just split the screen this way...
http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/5.jpg

Well, is that better?

[EDIT: Should work now!?]

Well, it's hard to say if it's an improvement or not... Perhaps if I got a little more than a small white box and a red cross, I might be able to offer a more constructive comment.

Oh, is it not working? Soz - I'll try again. Check back in a bit.

I quite like it, I can see what you mean in terms of tiding up the blocks but it would mean loosing thier topic title for the ticker when they go live and you know how they love that.

Not sure if it works, from a reading PoV. These Live captions are like Post-It notes on a document, a little note on the side, telling you the video you can see is Live as you see it.

The name straps, are not quite the same, they are like captions on an image in a newspaper or magazine, usually underneath it.

The clock and logo are there not for content (except perhaps the clock) but as a grounding to show the time and channel (and perhaps date) and so they go where you would expect them to be, in america its bottom right, or bottom left, over here it was normally top left.

Now if we think about these elements in this context, we can think about positioning and layout like a piece of paper. Not everything should go in one place, as the purposes of each element is different, and their location must be suitable for their function.

You can break the rules from time to time, but only if the results are clear and functional . I feel there is too much info at the bottom, hence it is cluttered, and the purposes of each element isnt clearly defined.

Let me help you Martin! The red rectangle with LIVE written on it indicates that the image above it is live. The four numbers with a semi-colon between the 2nd and 3rd indicate the time. The black long rectangle with the place name written on it indicates the location the picture above it was or is being filmed....

You speak about there being set ways to do things, and give way that sometimes rules can be broken - but in my view there is room for evolution. Set ways change over time. Radio programmes used to have a metronome ticking away between programmes for a few minutes to indicate clearly that one had finished and the next thing would be something different. We've moved on from that.

News 24 moved their on screen logo to be part of the whole graphics package (and it looks like Sky will be doing similar) where they used to have a separate DOG top left. I think they wanted ALL their graphics and information to be contained within the TOG but could see a way to include the LIVE & location, or it wasn't technically possible. And I've had an email from Mark Popescu saying as much (he's not happy with the LIVE DOG either but says there's nowhere else to put it at the moment!)

There was no need for that kind of comment, I was just offering an opinion, and trying to justify it with my own reasoning.

I still dont think it is a good idea having that much information in one space as it seem cluttered and IMO takes a bit longer to identify what each bit of text means.

Sorry. I shouldn't have been so sarcastic. Your opinions are welcome, even if I disagree with them.

And I am sorry If you felt me comments where offensive in any way. It seems to be 'lets pi*s on mdta day' today! lol

I don't like it.

I think theres a danger of making it too blocky, remember you have the whole screen and so long as it doesn't obstruct the footage I don't see why you shouldn't use it

Nice idea, but in removing one problem (messiness at the top left of the screen) you've created another. Modifications to the live and location strap were made by News 24 to get around this problem-

http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/3.jpg

How do you differentiate between the location of the presenter on the left and the shot on the right? There simply isn't space in your mock to fit in "College Green" or "Westminster" under Andrew Marr...it inevitably spills into the main screen (which could be showing non-live pictures from a completely different location).

Having said this I like the idea of tower moving down occasionally over the masthead (to be honest the rotation graphics between each story and now a bit annoying and unnecessary) to create an extra line. I would do this by shrinking the large aston and keeping the info strap in view however (like they do on somber occasions or to avoid obscuring the picture). I would then use the extra space created above the tower for infobursts during recorded reports and prolonged press conferences/speeches...things such as "next story: Saddam Hussain trial" or "sport in 3 minutes" or "live to westminster in 2 minutes" etc.

Mmmmm... I'm not sure these work.

To me it seems a bit pointless to move the graphics down to cover the ticker just so you can stick the Live/Location strap up. Consider what happens in the case of a breaking news story - that's when you need to communicate a lot of info to viewers. But in breaking news stories, there also tends to be a lot of live coverage. So to tell viewers they're watching live coverage, you'd be sacrificing part of the information that brings them up to date on it - whether it be the ticker, or the strap with the info on it, or whatever. Everything gets compromised in a sense - you've got to muck about with where different things are. If you were going to stick the Live/Location with the rest of the graphics at the bottom of the screen, why not just add it to the top without moving the rest of the graphics up and down?

That having been said, I'm not sure that's the best solution. Personally, I quite like what BBC World does - it doesn't bother with a little box at the top of the screen for location info... It does it just as part of the normal aston at the bottom of the screen. As it rotates through different information, one of the things it might display during a story is the location of the reporter or where the images are coming from in a single line strap. If you wanted to keep everything in the one unit, you could even have a special version of the tower which indicates a live story - perhaps replacing the clock, or indeed adapting the main channel DOG to display "Live" in some way.