DI
For my two cents:
I'm a bit confused at this stage as to what to make of it all. The titles are clearly pinched from RTE Sport (and matched with the ITV colours). The title sequence is basically a mish-mash of a Star Trek Wormhole and the 2000 series title wormhole thingy with circles.
The desk to absolutely WAY too big and clearly a jibe at Vincent Browne's massive ugly desk in his show on TV3 - a sort of 'well f*** you Vinny, we can get an even bigger desk" RTE thing.
The cityscape on the rear panels is nice. Only thing is if you flick over to the BBC News 24 during the show, you'll notice they're a decent distance away with proper aspect zoom, whereas the RTE ones look like they could fall on top of the presenter at any time!
The music I must say is horrific. Bland and mediocre. It's almost as if the news is trying to sneak up on you and catch you off guard as opposed to grabbing you by the proverbial wedding tackle and telling you what's happening!
I'm still a bit lost though. Definitely better than the scoury coffee, but is that like saying Meningitis is better than Tuberculosis???
I dunno. If anyone from RTE is looking for a few quick pointers, here's my list:
- Get rid of the bloody laptops. Apart from the fact they're out of date, they're never used!
- Add some noisy drums to the music. MORE COW BELL!
- Zoom out the cityscape imagery - or better still, use an image from outside of Dublin
- Put some strip lighting on the bottom of the panels about 6 inches from the floor to make the place look a bit more cosy
- Buy David Murphy a nice tie
- Change all the wolly covers on the microphones, starting with Seán Whelan (see 9 o'clock news for reason why!)
- Move the desk closer to the right-side panels
- Get an RTE logo and stick it to the oval inset on the floor in front of the desk
- Fix the brightness of the panels behind the desk to match (see Barack Obama's head on the 9)
- Fix the alignment of the titles as they appear above the DOG
- Lastly, tidy the floor before cutting to a wide shot. The News On Two's trendy sports presenter looked like he was standing outside a pub at 4am with the stuff at his feet!
Rant over for now
EDIT: Just read the Damien Mulley piece. Sorry for the reference to €5m - the Daily Mail strikes again eh!
I'm a bit confused at this stage as to what to make of it all. The titles are clearly pinched from RTE Sport (and matched with the ITV colours). The title sequence is basically a mish-mash of a Star Trek Wormhole and the 2000 series title wormhole thingy with circles.
The desk to absolutely WAY too big and clearly a jibe at Vincent Browne's massive ugly desk in his show on TV3 - a sort of 'well f*** you Vinny, we can get an even bigger desk" RTE thing.
The cityscape on the rear panels is nice. Only thing is if you flick over to the BBC News 24 during the show, you'll notice they're a decent distance away with proper aspect zoom, whereas the RTE ones look like they could fall on top of the presenter at any time!
The music I must say is horrific. Bland and mediocre. It's almost as if the news is trying to sneak up on you and catch you off guard as opposed to grabbing you by the proverbial wedding tackle and telling you what's happening!
I'm still a bit lost though. Definitely better than the scoury coffee, but is that like saying Meningitis is better than Tuberculosis???
I dunno. If anyone from RTE is looking for a few quick pointers, here's my list:
- Get rid of the bloody laptops. Apart from the fact they're out of date, they're never used!
- Add some noisy drums to the music. MORE COW BELL!
- Zoom out the cityscape imagery - or better still, use an image from outside of Dublin
- Put some strip lighting on the bottom of the panels about 6 inches from the floor to make the place look a bit more cosy
- Buy David Murphy a nice tie
- Change all the wolly covers on the microphones, starting with Seán Whelan (see 9 o'clock news for reason why!)
- Move the desk closer to the right-side panels
- Get an RTE logo and stick it to the oval inset on the floor in front of the desk
- Fix the brightness of the panels behind the desk to match (see Barack Obama's head on the 9)
- Fix the alignment of the titles as they appear above the DOG
- Lastly, tidy the floor before cutting to a wide shot. The News On Two's trendy sports presenter looked like he was standing outside a pub at 4am with the stuff at his feet!
Rant over for now
EDIT: Just read the Damien Mulley piece. Sorry for the reference to €5m - the Daily Mail strikes again eh!
FL
No change with the weather I see. Shame, one thing I'd like to see RTÉ introduce, or TV3 to revert to, is the breakdown of the country into four quadrants for each provence. Martin King's forecasts used to start in Ulster and North Leienster and move across to Connaught and North Munster, move down for the the South of Munster and then move back up to cover the rest of Leinster and Dublin. Much better detail back then.
RT
Thanks for those TV Room!
Having seen all the bulletins, what strikes one above all about the new scheme is the lack of cohesiveness between the various elements: music, graphics and set. What is equally notable, as with the last titles, is the complete lack of sense or meaning given to the opening sequence. For some reason RTÉ seem to be obsessed with the notion that titles must be abstract and follow the conventions of the artistic world – namely employing a hidden meaning or subtle theme to underpin the wider image. This is poppycock stuff, and absolutely typical of the artsy, Kathleen Watkins set that still hold so much sway in RTÉ. Whilst previous Celtic influenced schemes have a stark cultural relevance, the sort of rubbish we’re being subjected to here, as per the last ensemble, is preposterous patronising garbage with absolutely no obvious relevance. In fact I’m distinctly mortified every time I see the imbecilic new titles, which give the impression of a small broadcaster attempting to be cool and cutting-edge with a fancy graphics package beyond that of its artistic abilities. Swirls of watery elements look absolutely ridiculous introducing a news programme, and eventually (after a long, drawn out and thoroughly boring sequence) progress to utter farce through their morphing into a stupidly conceived coil which in turn randomly spews out a crass rectangle displaying the RTÉ News logo. It’s all so ridiculously contrived, random, disjointed, and above all pointless. And thus highly embarrassing to watch.
O'Donnell Abu is a delightful idea, but poorly executed in a manner that does no justice to either the piece or the programme it introduces. It borders on a disco mix rather than a more suitable distinguished orchestral one. The disco tail at the end of the bulletins beggars belief.
Fully agreed with diarmy that the whole package is a rehash of the previous, on a number of levels, and for all the wrong reasons. The only thing they got right as far as I’m concerned is the fresh colour scheme which is spot on.
What jarrs above all in the studio, and it’s so obvious that it is really astounding how it was let through, is the ghastly royal blue engaged for the desk and lower set lighting. How can nobody see that this – aside from looking hideously frumpy and 1990s – has zero connection with the wider spearmint scheme of sea greens, blues, silver and white? It couldn’t jarr anymore if it tried! The entire set could be transformed simply by changing the colour of the lighting to a light blue or fresh green. This would a) tie in with the wider graphics and titles ensemble, b) drag RTÉ News into the 21st century, and c) make the entire studio fresher, brighter and instantly more visually engaging. The blue is so awful I cannot bear to look at it any longer, and that’s only after a day.
On the desk front, it`is embarrassingly positioned to ape that of BBC News, but falls flat on its face as a result of the curved shape which demands centre-stage attention. The failure of the wider set to appear as a cohesive whole gives the appearance of everything being needlessly shoved down the far corner, rather that the sophisticated simple balance of the BBC’s set-up. This is a basic tenet of design that has been ignored. The microphones are nastily distracting and unnecessarily bulky. Not only should they be white or grey, they should be slim and with no pop covers. Again one of the fundamentals that lets the wider scheme down.
I genuinely wish I had some positives to say about this scheme, but these can sadly be purely limited to the magnificent straps and animated graphics. The vision mixing has also got notably snappier. But as a presentation package I find it thoroughly ill-conceived, clunky, often bordering on ignorant, and above all lacking in confident design cohesion.
It nowhere near lives up to the high expectations held for it.
Having seen all the bulletins, what strikes one above all about the new scheme is the lack of cohesiveness between the various elements: music, graphics and set. What is equally notable, as with the last titles, is the complete lack of sense or meaning given to the opening sequence. For some reason RTÉ seem to be obsessed with the notion that titles must be abstract and follow the conventions of the artistic world – namely employing a hidden meaning or subtle theme to underpin the wider image. This is poppycock stuff, and absolutely typical of the artsy, Kathleen Watkins set that still hold so much sway in RTÉ. Whilst previous Celtic influenced schemes have a stark cultural relevance, the sort of rubbish we’re being subjected to here, as per the last ensemble, is preposterous patronising garbage with absolutely no obvious relevance. In fact I’m distinctly mortified every time I see the imbecilic new titles, which give the impression of a small broadcaster attempting to be cool and cutting-edge with a fancy graphics package beyond that of its artistic abilities. Swirls of watery elements look absolutely ridiculous introducing a news programme, and eventually (after a long, drawn out and thoroughly boring sequence) progress to utter farce through their morphing into a stupidly conceived coil which in turn randomly spews out a crass rectangle displaying the RTÉ News logo. It’s all so ridiculously contrived, random, disjointed, and above all pointless. And thus highly embarrassing to watch.
O'Donnell Abu is a delightful idea, but poorly executed in a manner that does no justice to either the piece or the programme it introduces. It borders on a disco mix rather than a more suitable distinguished orchestral one. The disco tail at the end of the bulletins beggars belief.
Fully agreed with diarmy that the whole package is a rehash of the previous, on a number of levels, and for all the wrong reasons. The only thing they got right as far as I’m concerned is the fresh colour scheme which is spot on.
What jarrs above all in the studio, and it’s so obvious that it is really astounding how it was let through, is the ghastly royal blue engaged for the desk and lower set lighting. How can nobody see that this – aside from looking hideously frumpy and 1990s – has zero connection with the wider spearmint scheme of sea greens, blues, silver and white? It couldn’t jarr anymore if it tried! The entire set could be transformed simply by changing the colour of the lighting to a light blue or fresh green. This would a) tie in with the wider graphics and titles ensemble, b) drag RTÉ News into the 21st century, and c) make the entire studio fresher, brighter and instantly more visually engaging. The blue is so awful I cannot bear to look at it any longer, and that’s only after a day.
On the desk front, it`is embarrassingly positioned to ape that of BBC News, but falls flat on its face as a result of the curved shape which demands centre-stage attention. The failure of the wider set to appear as a cohesive whole gives the appearance of everything being needlessly shoved down the far corner, rather that the sophisticated simple balance of the BBC’s set-up. This is a basic tenet of design that has been ignored. The microphones are nastily distracting and unnecessarily bulky. Not only should they be white or grey, they should be slim and with no pop covers. Again one of the fundamentals that lets the wider scheme down.
I genuinely wish I had some positives to say about this scheme, but these can sadly be purely limited to the magnificent straps and animated graphics. The vision mixing has also got notably snappier. But as a presentation package I find it thoroughly ill-conceived, clunky, often bordering on ignorant, and above all lacking in confident design cohesion.
It nowhere near lives up to the high expectations held for it.
PC
I've just seen a trailer on RTE News Now during the breakfiller for News and Current Affairs, which has a 360 degree shot of 2003-2006 set. Does this still go out on air, or is it only used online now?
MI
Just online, hasn't been on air in quite awhile.
Noticed a flash going off during the Six-One this evening as Sharon handed over to Bryan after the 'in crisis' segment, all the behind-the-scenes photos explain it!
Agreed about the cityscape that it looks well apart from the sky, it'd look alright during the summer I guess but looks odd this time of year.
Philip Cobbold posted:
I've just seen a trailer on RTE News Now during the breakfiller for News and Current Affairs, which has a 360 degree shot of 2003-2006 set. Does this still go out on air, or is it only used online now?
Just online, hasn't been on air in quite awhile.
Noticed a flash going off during the Six-One this evening as Sharon handed over to Bryan after the 'in crisis' segment, all the behind-the-scenes photos explain it!
Agreed about the cityscape that it looks well apart from the sky, it'd look alright during the summer I guess but looks odd this time of year.