New "Concentration" set idea

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'DjohnsonCB\' date=\'Jul 11 2003, 09:58 AM\'] I adopted Chris Lemon's proposal about the board in the center, and the host and player areas flanking either side. [/quote]
 Just for the record, I didn't suggest the board should be in the center of the set. (Not that I'm saying it SHOULDN'T, either, we'll see what you come up with.) I was merely commenting on how a set could be designed so the board would work in a 16x9 HDTV shot the as well as it does in its native 4x3, in that \"something\" should be on either side of the board so as to occupy the dead space.

In all honestly, I dunno that I like the idea of a Concentration set that separates the contestants from the host. It doesn't HAVE to be as intimate as the previous incarnations, but something about the flow of the show makes me feel like the host should be between the two players.

[HYHYBT]

No matter WHAT you do, you're gonna have space to fill on the flanks, because the board by necessity needs to be a 4x3 ratio.

I must be missing something. Why must the board \"by necessity\" be 4x3?

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'HYHYBT\' date=\'Jul 18 2003, 01:04 PM\'] I must be missing something. Why must the board "by necessity" be 4x3? [/quote]
 Because, for the most part, a direct shot of the game board should fill up your television screen, and the aspect ratio of a regular (not widescreen) television is 4x3.

(Note that by that I mean \"four units wide by three units high\", not a 12-square board.)

[DjohnsonCB]

Okay, I finished the revised set proposal.  It's on the same page as the old one, which still exists below it at

http://wtv-zone.com/dpjohnson/concentration/index.html

The color scheme this time around isn't a jarring rainbow, but a simple combo of blue, sea green, pastel yellow and light gray which could be considered silver.  The neon rendition of the title and logo still exist over where the MC sits, but \"Concentration\" is all orange now.  The small light blue thing over it is the bottom tip of the letter jumble in the logo, which I didn't have room to add it its entirety; you can picture my intention.        

Yellow and green neon tubes are on the contestants' podiums (front side only, not the back--wouldn't want to burn their legs); again, this is to designate whose turn it is as well as buzz-in with the solution whereupon the lights may do a \"chase\" effect.   Ovals are a major theme here which, unlike the TPIR hexagons, dont seem as dated.  They exist on the board numbers, which are of a simpler design than my first, but different from all previous TV versions.  This time I showed all the numbers, however, the prizes and other cards I used in the first board would still be used here, still looking as they did before.

Finally, the first picture showing the board was created in approximately the same dimensions as an HDTV screen.  I feel the best way to adapt this game to those wider dimensions would be to use a lot of split-screen shots, with the entire board taking up the left two-thirds of the picture and a player calling numbers on the far right.  The strip of multicolored spotlights that hangs over the board *could* be positioned instead over the MC area instead if that sound more practical.

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'DjohnsonCB\' date=\'Jul 19 2003, 10:39 AM\'] I feel the best way to adapt this game to those wider dimensions would be to use a lot of split-screen shots, with the entire board taking up the left two-thirds of the picture and a player calling numbers on the far right. [/quote]
 You can't do that, though. At least not for a few years, and especially not while the 4x3 normal television is still prevalent.

You're not shooting the show with two different sets of cameras, so you can't block (technical term: to \"block\" a show means \"to design how the camera shots are going to be done\") the show one way for widescreen and another for 4x3. Every shot has to work with BOTH, 'cuz yer shooting with the same camera, which means the pertinent information has to be in that 4x3 window in the middle of the widescreen shot. The stuff on the ends has to be inoffensive to a widescreen shot, but also unimportant if it should be cut off, which it would be on a 4x3 TV. Your shot would have half the board on the left side and half of the contestant's head on the right, which is worthless.

Again, this is why a show like this runs into blocking problems when you insist on separating the host and the contestants, because unless their parts of the set are way out in the parking lot, you can't get a widescreen shot of the board that doesn't have contestants or a host poking in from the sides, and that's a bad shot.