Is the Set too Colorful and Clashing Now?

[MrPlinko]

Guys,

I find the set of Price to be too overwhelming with color.  There's less of a natural feel to the colors.  With almost a forced circus-like atmosphere of too much "Wow!"  It's almost the feeling of several clowns at a kid's birthday party with the colors.

Go back to even the beginning of the Drew era in Season 37 for several seasons after, and the sets were fine.  Now it's color overkill.

Joe

[GobGlom]

I don't think it's excessively colorful, no more than it used to be, but they could do without the cartoonish asterisks everywhere. HD cameras do make the image brighter.

[Off_trak]

The set needs to be bright due to the high def cameras. They need lots of light, apparently, in order to capture the highest quality image.

[imhomerjay]

In a word, no.

[ThomHuge]

The audience area definitely is, with all the LEDs and garish Goodson asterisks. The only thing that I think is over-the-top on stage are the LEDs on the turntable (both the ones between the screens and on the turntable itself). I prefer the older design that just had color-changing squares, since it kept the focus on Drew. As it is now I feel like the whole turntable is too glitzy and steals attention from Drew and the player, or players during the showcases.

[EvilChameleon]

Maybe certain games are too bright now, like Half Off and Punch A Bunch, but the set itself is fine.

[SteveGavazzi]

Punch a Bunch?  Really?  I think the current color scheme is a vast improvement.

[urbanpreppie0004]

I like the set. I even like the audience panels in the back with the asterisks.

But I like them MORE when there's a unifying theme with the colors. The Premiere show for this season is my favorite.

[priceguy]

I wouldn't say that the set is too colourful, but it is a bit sensory overload (just watch Drew make his entrance...ugh). All the video screens on set are constantly in motion; never just a static image. The light panels on the doors can flash and change colour. The door borders/homebase have LED strips that are ever changing colour throughout the show. And the audience area is just plain awful. The giant asterisks and LED pillars make the already small audience area look even more cramped.  Long story short, it's not the amount of colour that irks me, it's the excessive amount of "stuff."

[Timotheus]

I love how colorful the set is. There's a lot of charm to the brown sets of the 70s, but I think the super saturated and bright aesthetic the show uses now is a great fit.

[CBSpromoman]

For me, the worst part of the set is the home base monitor wall.

If those monitors were replaced with panels that could be lit with LEDs, it'd be one thing. But they insist on putting animation in all of those monitors and it makes the already bright backdrop that much busier. You lose Drew and the contestant in all the visual noise. It's far too distracting.

I used to run lights for my church and left the booth when the worship pastor insisted on changing things up and requiring that lights ALWAYS be doing something. Sometimes, you stop moving things in the BACKGROUND so you can focus better on what's happening in the FOREGROUND.

[Axl]

The set needs to be bright due to the high def cameras. They need lots of light, apparently, in order to capture the highest quality image.

No, contemporary cameras require far, far less light than older cameras.  The colors are strictly an aesthetic choice.

If those monitors were replaced with panels that could be lit with LEDs, it'd be one thing. But they insist on putting animation in all of those monitors and it makes the already bright backdrop that much busier. You lose Drew and the contestant in all the visual noise. It's far too distracting.

I think there's a bit too much animation in general.  What's the point of animating the reveals in Card Game, for instance?  It only throws off the timing.

[Flerbert419]

What's the point of animating the reveals in Card Game, for instance?

To make up for Drew's lack of flourish and suspense when reading the price, they took the opportunity to program him out of the game.

[ThomHuge]

To make up for Drew's lack of flourish and suspense when reading the price, they took the opportunity to program him out of the game.

I think that's part of it, but if you look at other game shows on the air right now (I'm thinking Jeopardy and Wheel mostly), they have sets that light up and change color too. Wheel has video walls everywhere, and the last time I paid attention, the one behind the players had a video loop. Not enough to be really distracting but you knew it was there. Their sets feel appropriate for their atmospheres--Jeopardy is really serious and Wheel is more relaxed and fun.

Price has always been kind of like an all-out party atmosphere, and I think their set and color choices reflect that. There's always something flashing, changing color, animating, something; enough to get a casual channel-changer to tune in and stay tuned. Used to be seeing Bob Barker was enough to do that, but without him I agree with Flerbert, they have to up their game in other ways to grab and hold attention.

On the topic of more light vs less light--I actually think the set is lit a lot less brightly than it used to be overall, since so many pieces of it light up on their own and they don't need to flood the stage quite so much. I keep an eye on the doors to see that; if you watch the parts of them that don't light up, for the most part they're not lit brightly at all. The only exceptions are when someone is standing next to them. Door #1 really shows it, since anytime they turn the lights up even a little, that orange color really picks it up.

[JayC]

Price has always been kind of like an all-out party atmosphere, and I think their set and color choices reflect that. There's always something flashing, changing color, animating, something; enough to get a casual channel-changer to tune in and stay tuned. Used to be seeing Bob Barker was enough to do that, but without him I agree with Flerbert, they have to up their game in other ways to grab and hold attention.

There's also the matter of the difference in the need and how to grab attention in today's world being different from when Bob hosted. Yes Bob was enough of a draw on his own, but it's not just because of him not being there that they had to radically change the set and certain way things are revealed. Today's world has much more things competing for our attention then when Bob hosted, and high-tech sets and graphics are the modern way to hold attention.