I am really interested in TV sets especially the soaps (eg Elstree to Albert Square) and love the find out the history of when they were built, how they were built and looking at pictures of them in construction. Does anyone know of any good sites where I could find this.
I am really interested in TV sets especially the soaps (eg Elstree to Albert Square) and love the find out the history of when they were built, how they were built and looking at pictures of them in construction. Does anyone know of any good sites where I could find this.
Your help is appreciated!
Do you mean the "back lots" which are the exteriors (like Albert Square) - which are just fake frontage usually? They are often built to reduced scale (particularly things like roads)
Or do you mean the studio flats that are used to shoot the three-wall interiors? (The 4th wall isn't there and is how the sets are shot.
Brookside and Eldorado were unusual in that they had location sets - but Corrie, Emmerdale, EastEnders etc. are fake exteriors and studio interiors for the main locations.
I checked out Emmerdale's location set on Google Earth and was surprised how small the village actually is.
I visited Coronation St. many moons ago before the street had the additional streets built next to it and was surprised just how small it is. Of course you can get a proper birds eye view of Coronation Street now by visiting the Beetham Tower.
Coronation street 'street' set was originally inside the studio, the set was too large to fit in so they only used one end or the other. Part of the reason for demolishing number 7 was to make more space to fit it in, or so I'm told. the outside street seen in early opening titles was Archie Street which was demolished in 1971.
in 1968 an outdoor set was built next to real viaducts near the studios, these were tiny facades beside the bonded warehouse, for some reason I read in one book on corry that this was actually a real row of seven houses between a pub and a shop which just happened to be there, not sure why they said that. This set was the location of the new york set on the studio tour and the viaduct arches have been used for davenports garage and the police station exterior set (the interior for the police station is inside the factory on the street, the factory set is now the studio but it was originally inside the street frontage, other sets on the street are the garage / kerbab shop / butchers / bookies and health centre which also houses the hospital set) everything else is in the studios
In 1982 a bigger set was built in the present location with full size frontages but only half the width so behind the hallways are the back kitchens. in 1990 the factory and community centre were demolished and the present houses and shops built, then in the late 90's Victoria street was built finishing last year with the new flats.
emmerdale outdoor sets started off being filmed in real villages including Eshot which is where the plane crash in 1993 was filmed. In 1996 the present village was built on the Harwood estate, most of the buildings are just empty facades but some are used as green rooms and for security. some are filmed in, including the vets, garage and the Wyldes food shop but most interiors are filmed in the studios in Leeds
Brookside is / was unusual to use real houses to film in, although only 6 were used as character houses there are 13 house on the close, numbers 1,2,3 were a terrace which was knocked together to make the techinal block, wardrobe, make up etc. number 4 became the canteen, numbers 5-10 were the character houses with the garages being used to store scaffolding and equipment for filming, numbers 11 ans 12 were offices and number 13 was the security office. to make filming easier internal walls were removed between the bedrooms and wardrobes fitted into the spaces which the cameras then filmed through from the other rooms, for interior night scenes the windows had to be blacked out in the daytime. The close was at the end of the real 'brookside' estate in west derby in Liverpool
in 1990 thee parade was built which was five miles away at Childwall, in an old collage block, the shops were constructed in the spaces between the concrete supports of of the building so they just took out the wall and put in the shop fronts, the petrol station was also added. the path to the parade went around the corner then stopped as did the one on the close.
when brookside finished the parade became the location of Grange hill with a facade put up infront of the garage which is still there, used as a props store, the shops because part of the school buildings and the pub still exisits as the club in Hollyoaks. The close was also used for some of the Hollyoaks and grange hill characters, mainly numbers 7 and 8 which became number 20 and 19 and home to the Taylor-Burtons. and another family. The reason we never saw inside jack Michaelson's house at number 8 when the programme ended was because it was already being used as an interior for the taylor-Burtons on Hollyoaks. Another house which wasn't used for filming on Brookside was used as the Cunninghams house for a bit as well. Now the close is still in the throws of being made inhabitable again after seven years of failed purchases by several developers.
Eastenders Albert Square was built in 1984 on the site of the building site in the first series of auf wiedersehen pet, originally it was just three sides of the square and bridge street, the fourth side of albert square (the truman's and masoods houses / Pats house and the house in the corner which backs onto the square) were built in 1987, other extentions have been added over time to extend bridge street, George Street, etc and make what appears to be one big cul-de-sac.
like corry some of the outdoor sets are filmed in, the minute mart / arches garage / argie bargie (occasionally) / chip shop / video shop / nail bar. The café, was also intended to be filmed inalthough they rarely used it prefering the indoor set so it's used as a green room during outdoor filming
Unlike corry and emmerdale the Albert Square set isn't made of bricks and mortar but just plyboard facades which as tv cameras improve really shows in some close ups.
so that's as much as I know, sure some other will fill in the blanks
I presume that's why Eastenders are making a much bigger fuss than Corrie about having a new backlot built for HD. The corrie set on Streetview does actually look very realistic. One thing I was wondering though, on both the Rovers and Dev's shop there are big metal things sticking out of the first floor, these seem too big to be decorative so I presume they're used to stick a camera on to get a shot down the street rather than use a crane?
I presume that's why Eastenders are making a much bigger fuss than Corrie about having a new backlot built for HD. The corrie set on Streetview does actually look very realistic. One thing I was wondering though, on both the Rovers and Dev's shop there are big metal things sticking out of the first floor, these seem too big to be decorative so I presume they're used to stick a camera on to get a shot down the street rather than use a crane?
Our local butchers has one, they stick a Christmas tree in there.
One thing I was wondering though, on both the Rovers and Dev's shop there are big metal things sticking out of the first floor, these seem too big to be decorative so I presume they're used to stick a camera on to get a shot down the street rather than use a crane?
I have seen something similar in real life although I can't recall where. I think its to stick a flag in.
One thing I was wondering though, on both the Rovers and Dev's shop there are big metal things sticking out of the first floor, these seem too big to be decorative so I presume they're used to stick a camera on to get a shot down the street rather than use a crane?
I have seen something similar in real life although I can't recall where. I think its to stick a flag in.
A flag, or perhaps a boom arm for a light fixture,
Could even be used to hold a canopy so that they can film when it rains without it landing on the talent.
thanks for that. yeh i was thinking mainly bout the back lots but that info was great. any one could gie any more or even have pics would be great. really appreciate everyones help!!
I also remember reading about the original Coronation Street outdoor set and in one scene in the early 70s it was dwarfed by a fire engine. The original set looked duller and more drab than the present one.
In some shots in EastEnders, one of the large storeroom buildings at Elstree can clearly be seen behind and to the right of what used to be Dr Legg's house. Behind this, the back of Neptune House (which was once used as Grange Hill School) can be seen.
