When ITV took over GMTV last year and rebranded its breakfast television show as Daybreak, with new hosts Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley, its production team found itself in a highly enviable new space whose breathtaking location demanded a novel combination of technological solutions. Occupying the former Studio 7 at The London Studios on the South Bank, the new Daybreak studio commands a panoramic view of the Thames from Waterloo Bridge to St Paul's Cathedral through 2.5 metre-tall glass windows. And therein lies a tale.

Matt Carter, Head of Lighting and Vision for Daybreak, told L&SI: "When ITV bought out Disney's shares in GMTV, they decided to totally revamp the show and start again. GMTV's studio was old and tired, as were the cameras and the rest of the kit." Sitting in the gleaming new studio with its sweeping backdrop, he continued: "The decision to move was part of the overall plan to modernise the whole look of the breakfast output for ITV. One of our new Editors, on seeing the studio for the first time with the set and lighting in place, commented to Adrian Chiles that this was the 'first truly 21st century studio - this is the future!'"

The move endowed Carter and his team with both a spectacular studio and a major challenge. The huge range of ambient light that confronts them through the seasons during the early-morning shoots is a backdrop that varies from almost pitch black during winter, to summer when the sun will rise directly behind the presenters' sofas - positioned neatly to frame St Paul's, due east.

"We had about four months to decide how to fit out the studio, with the new show starting last September," says Carter. "We were also going high definition, which meant replacing four SD cameras with a six-camera high definition shoot."

The first issue, controlling ambient light levels, was solved by SmartGlass International's Solar Control product, in which a layer of SPD smart film, containing microscopic rod-shaped particles suspended in fluid, is laminated between two layers of glass. In the film's natural state the rods disperse randomly and the film is almost opaque. When a voltage is applied to the film, the rods align in parallel, allowing light to pass through. The transition between the two states can be instant or progressive and the transmissive state is completely even across each panel's surface; ideal, in fact, for the job.

Meanwhile, Carter had been thinking hard about his lighting options. Two phone calls later, to Stage Electrics and ETC, the issues of blending external and internal light began to fuse into an integrated solution.

DAYLIGHT BLUES

"We're staring at a window," Carter continues, "and we need to control that somehow because with St. Paul's as our main shot, when we're on air at six o'clock in the morning during summer, we'll be staring straight down the barrel of the sunrise. We very quickly found the SmartGlass system and the next issues were how to control it and balance daylight with studio lighting." Two other factors also came into play: SmartGlass dims not to neutral density at the very end of its dimming curve, but to deep blue, and in each frame the active film area stops a few millimetres short of the glass edge, leaving a thin clear strip. The latter was dealt with simply by turning it into a design feature. The fade-to-blue issue would take more thought, so while the windows went in, lighting and control were addressed.

"I had seen ETC's Lustr LED units at the PLASA Show," says Carter, "and I contacted both ETC and Stage Electrics, with whom I've worked since our GMTV days, to organise a test, and the units were really impressively bright. That was always my worry because, facing the windows, I needed something very punchy to get enough level inside.

"For over an hour we stood in a studio trying every possible combination, moving lights around, pointing them at people, checking that they still looked good with daylight, and we concluded that, yes, it would work. And because the show is effectively shot in 360 degrees, we agreed there was no point in half measures - instead of HMIs the whole lot would be LED, apart from a few tungsten ground rows.

"The knock-on from that, of course, is less heat, power consumption, weight and cost. With GMTV we used around about 120A per phase - 360A for the whole studio per show. Now, with everything on full including the video wall, we're running at 62.5 amps, one sixth of the total consumption. Also, factor in that in Studio Three the air conditioning was always on full blast, whereas here we are more often asked to warm it up. And there's no lamp replacement and recycling. The savings are astronomical."

The first day's rehearsals, on a bright August day, proved that at the windows' bluest point the colour temperature was around 7,800k. Dialling the blue out of the camera picture returned the window colour to neutral but turned the studio interior bright orange. "At which point," notes Carter, "conventionally that's game over - or you spend an hour putting blue gels over every light. We then wound out the red and the orange of the LED units and boosted the blue and cyan and everybody was back looking normal. It took us two minutes of tweaking; it was just a case of select those lamps, take those colours out, put that colour in and, OK, we're ready to go. At that point an LD, Stuart Gain, who was helping us, commented, 'This is a complete game changer for television, because you've got so much control over every aspect of the picture.' And I agree. In visual terms, it's a softer light; you get quite a soft shadow on people's faces, which is a much kinder thing to do to a presenter in the morning, especially in high definition!"

With decision made to 'go LED', the next issue was control. Says Carter: "We discussed the ETC Paradigm unit with Stage Electrics and concluded the solution was to do a full installation with the Paradigm dimmers controlling the windows. Having their London Bridge office close at hand has been great for us, going back to when I joined GMTV four years ago and we brought in the Martin luminaires and Congo Junior desk with them."
Stage Electrics' Chris Patton explains: "We installed an ETC Paradigm dimming system with daylight harvesting sensors on the outside of the building, which monitor the sunlight falling on each section of SmartGlass. The system then dynamically adjusts the tint of the glass to balance the amount of ambient light in the studio. For manual operation, we installed touch screen panels in the studio and the control room and finally linked the whole system into the ETC lighting network to allow the SmartGlass to be controlled from the Congo Junior lighting desk".

The rig is populated by 75 ETC Selador LED Lustr and Vivid units, providing most key and fill lighting and three MAC 250 Entours, adding to the existing Martin MAC 250s and 300s previously owned by GMTV, along with Stage Electrics' custom designed brackets for the MACs to compensate for the low grid height. Four Arri 1.2kW HMI True Blue Daylight Fresnels complete the picture overhead. Tungsten fixtures are limited to a few around the performance area that can be pole-operated in a hurry.

RGB LED also abounds in the set with LEDs in desks, steps and other set elements, while12 GDS LED portable wireless battery-powered uplighters are easily redeployed as part of set changes during ad breaks, with no need to re-run cables. Further set lighting includes 15 Studio Due Archiled 150 LED fixtures and 11 Tryka FlectoLED ground row strips.

"We've got amazing flexibility on colour," adds Carter, "with LEDs in almost everything and with the MACs in strategic places we can even light a presenter who decides to do a piece to camera in a corridor off the main set. And we get things thrown at us: we had Alice Cooper in playing golf, as you do, and we just swung a couple of moving lights around to light him."

Finally, having dealt with daylight, the team had to tackle darkness. "We hadn't realised quite how dark it would be in the autumn and winter early mornings, and as we'd come off air at 8:30 it quickly got to the point where we didn't see daylight at all. And these days most city buildings are in total darkness at 4am." The solution takes the shape of a row of electric window blinds, uplit using a ground row of Lustr and Vivid units. Carter grins. "We also did a deal with St. Paul's to have their floodlighting come on for our backdrop - now we're pondering whether to put in a wireless DMX link so we can control St. Paul's from here!"