ITV Studios will invest £5m in its studio complex in Leeds to provide high definition facilities for the production of its Yorkshire soap Emmerdale, it revealed today.
Emmerdale's studios and production centre will move from their home at the back of the complex on Burley Road, the site of an old car showroom, into the main ITV site in Leeds on Kirkstall Road, formerly the home of Yorkshire Television, which produced hits such as Rising Damp.
could this lead to more shows being made up there?
Emmerdale seems to be the focus of this investment. Unless the Kirkstall Road studios are larger than the Burley Road studios, it seems unlikely that they'll be increasing production of studio-based programmes.
One of the articles does say "Production companies and other "creative industry" firms will be encouraged to rent spare office space in the studio building", but doesn't say anything about spare studio space.
It sounds to me that the old studios 3 & 4 at Kirkstall Road will be knocked through and refurbished for Emmerdale, therefore there will be no other studio space available for anything else as Emmerdale obviously have fixed sets
I'm puzzled what the 6 buildings are though, I can only think of about 4
They can't "knock through" 3 and 4, there's a considerable gap in between them.
I was told they were going to move Emmerdale into the main building when the 'mothball' announcement was made, and Calendar is sure to follow shortly.
Out of all the possible outcomes of cost-cutting, this is the best solution with the limited resources ITV have. Selling off all their ancillary buildings but refurbishing the purpose built Kirkstall Road studios is an entirely sensible decision.
They can't "knock through" 3 and 4, there's a considerable gap in between them.
I was told they were going to move Emmerdale into the main building when the 'mothball' announcement was made, and Calendar is sure to follow shortly.
Out of all the possible outcomes of cost-cutting, this is the best solution with the limited resources ITV have. Selling off all their ancillary buildings but refurbishing the purpose built Kirkstall Road studios is an entirely sensible decision.
I suspect the existing studio spaces will be utilised separately - there are advantages to having multiple smaller spaces rather than one big one when shooting soaps.
Most soaps have quite small individual sets for multiple locations, and the most popular ones are left standing. If you have multiple studios you can shoot two scenes simultaneously for different blocks/shows. If they are all in one studio you can't!
Equally, if you need to set/strike or light a non-standing set, you can do this in one studio whilst shooting in another.
EastEnders has done this at Elstree for a number of years now - spreading its standing sets between studios.
HOWEVER - re-equipping a studio for a drama doesn't mean the studios become available for other productions. The technical requirements for drama are actually quite basic in studio terms. You have 3 or 4 in cameras per studio for most scenes, only ever cut between them (so can do with a VERY basic vision mixer, or none at all, at one point EastEnders just used a matrix switch and had no vision mixer at all) and you usually ISO a lot of the cameras. You record directly to hard drive/server (with a tape backup usually), and edit as soon as you've shot. The sound requirements are also a bit different.
A studio specifically re-equipped just for a soap, could, be only useful for drama...
It makes a nice change that ITV are investing in something to do with Emmerdale at the minute. We all know Corrie is there baby and Emmy is the forgotten child despite Emmy being much better.
Please they are doing this if it means we will see certain cast members in HD...
and no I don't mean Pearl or Eric
I just find it ironic... in a good way... that the second a Notherner is set to take over, all the biased decisions around YTV's studios are starting to be corrected.
Well done Archie, you're not even there yet and you're making progress
I just find it ironic... in a good way... that the second a Notherner is set to take over, all the biased decisions around YTV's studios are starting to be corrected.
Well done Archie, you're not even there yet and you're making progress
