Sophie Raworth's bit was near pointless, all what seemed to be taken from it, was that there used to be a load of red here, and now there isn't. It was a gimmick that was basically irrelevant.
Its also debatable how much we get from Vine's stuff these days, the whole 'flag stones to number 10' business where there is often so much info, you can barely see it.
This is actually the problem. There is simply too much gimmickry for the graphics to be of actual use. It feels really like those whole segments are there just to distract whilst guests change or a bathroom break rather than a genuine effort to properly inform. They've used that same pavement up Downing Street for the past two or three elections and it just doesn't work! You can't read the text, then you might have a close up of the idiot Vine bouncing around vaguely pointing at something on the floor whilst spewing a load of words so not only do you need to focus on what he may or may not be pointing at, but then you have to listen hard to what his awful vocal delivery. Overly complex swingometers introduced hours in to the coverage with an explanation of swing despite dozens and dozens of declaration results showing a swing graphic. That wall of constituencies that took about four different swipes movements to get through. People like Chakrabati who just cannot do the job of speaking whilst operating the touchscreen in complete contrast to Christian Fraser in the afternoon who could use it effortlessly.
How can it be that programmes such as 1992 and 1997 had that great mix of informative, yet simple graphics mixed with yes a bit of light humour when required? We had nothing like that famous 1997 flyover showing Tory safe seats crumbling to Labour for example which would really have shown the scale of defeat of Labour heartlands last night. Yes thats a clear gimmick but it totally made sense and most importantly conveyed some complex data in a simple but memorable manner. A squiggly pavement of hexagons or endless flipper graphics just aren't as effective.
I've said (mostly to myself in my head) for a decade or so now, that the Vine offerings are really nothing compared to what Peter Snow and his team put together. If you consider all the interesting metaphors Snow used: "how many heaves", the "battleground" (to which you refer), the landslide, the tide guage thing, wheeling a set of steps up to the screen (can't quite remember what that was supposed to show but I do remember that many people - including ordinary viewers - got very excited about it) - and all of that was actually without the need for a self-contained VR set. (The house of commons was superimposed on a table in front of him.)
It, was, frankly, a lot easier for Snow to just gesture at things on the screen - screen not big enough? Make it bigger, wider, as they did. The swingometer is arguably more fun when it's partly a physical prop flown in from the ceiling.
Also, note they no longer use the swingometer to show predictions - possibly they think it's been superceded by the seat number predictions from Ipsos-Mori and John Curtice (saw him give a lecture in person recently - really fun and interesting).
Note the Downing Street setup couldn't cope with the small number of seats Labour won - Vine was clearly stuck at the edge of the studio unable to go any further.
I'm wondering if all this is budget - they simply can't justify the money for anything elaborate, but it'd be too embarrasing to scrap it completely - so instead they've done the bare minimal number of 'scenes', possibly a bit of dumbing down too / not wanting to overwhelm the audience.
There
is
stuff I admire about the Vine graphics - but it's mostly the background design - e.g. there's a very realistic reflective effect off the doors/windows of Downing Street as the camera moves around, the garden area of Downing Street over to the right is nicely done, along with the gates and the London Eye, and of course there's the sound design of for example, the Big Ben set, with some reverb and the clock ticking in the background, but in terms of adding value, the Vine graphics do nothing for me.
And another thing… was this year the first time the live constituency result astons have been dropped on BBC? (i.e. hold or gain, with animation for the latter) - they might have done so in 2017, but I can't find a recording of the full broadcast right now.
Disliked the VR above the real set, like many others.
Did
think the rest of the graphics looked beautiful, partly due to the new typeface. Sky's graphics I found a bit cluttered/inconsistent in places, though they managed to make quite a bland corporate HQ (well that's how I consider it the rest of the year) look very vibrant - mostly simply down to adding so much colour everywhere.) Have now caught up with all BBC overnight, time to watch ITV next…
