KitPlus | Articles

One Eyed 3D

The illusion of a single 3D image is created within the brain based on the spacial displacement of our two eyes. So how can you make a 3D production with one camera?The 3D stop frame animation feature film 'Coralline' was largely made with just one camera for each scene. The same DSLR camera was used to take left and right images successively. For...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 April 2011

NFTS, the future of digital visionaries

The Confession, a film from The National Film and Television School (NFTS), has recently been nominated for an Academy Award, in the Live Action Short Film category - the second nomination for an NFTS graduation film in this category in the last five years. The success of the film comes days after more than 40 NFTS graduates worked on nominated fil...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2011

Tape goes West at UWE

Three years ago a convoy of white vans arrived at the Faculty of Arts at the University of West of England in Bristol. An hour later its entire stock of SVHS camcorders, linear editing decks and analog tape were history. In came Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro and Panasonic digital camcorders. Now 20 professional tapeless HD camcorders have taken up...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2011

Lighting up Yorkshire

The Yorkshire town of Rawmarsh looks like an easy target. Its trolley buses have come and gone and its two train stations were both wrapped up more than 40 years ago. For many years, it was the home of potters and steel workers; it was a mining town from the 15th century, an industry that survived over 500 years until it was closed by a certain rut...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 January 2011

Does 2D to 3D really work?

It is widely said that 3D has to be done well as, if it’s not, then it actually can hurt the viewer and give 3D a bad name. Certainly there have been big efforts to make good 3D, with Sky going to great lengths to ensure they set a high standard. Unlike the old 3D celluloid films, digital 3D can be a completely stable medium; it does not degrade wi...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 December 2010

TV Bay Questions Editor and Technical Manager at Astley B...

Who are you? (about yourself and Astley Baker Davies)I am Taig McNab, editor and technical manager at Astley Baker Davies. We are a small, multi-award winning animation studio based in central London. What do you do? What does Astley Baker Davies do?We are most famous for our involvement with the Peppa Pig series. Our other shows include Ben & Holl...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 December 2010

How to create and brand a live TV experience online

Late last year, Pixel Power worked closely with the Perform Group to brand the first ever live England football match online, a landmark event. Before we discuss that in detail, there is a wider question to answer: what do we mean by “branding”? Branding is fundamentally how you differentiate your channel; how you make it stand out in the crowd and...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 July 2010

Aston ON

In August 2009 leading Spanish real-time graphics manufacturer, Brainstorm Multimedia acquired the Aston 7 character generator from the Softel Group. With over 30 years on the market, Aston is one of the most established brands in the business and has been the gold standard in character generation in the United Kingdom for many years – to the exten...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010

Lighting the X Factor

It’s Friday morning at a television studio in the shadow of Wembley Stadium’s iconic arch and already there are fans and paparazzi outside waiting to catch a glimpse of their favourite contestants and judges arriving for rehearsals. Now three weeks into the live final shows, nine contestants have reached ‘Rock Week’, once again singing for their li...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 December 2009

Eye to Eye New post-production kit at IBC 2009

This alphabetical overview of new video and film post-production kit at IBC 2009 was going to start with Apple but the company pulled out of both NAB and IBC in 2008. I begin instead with Avid which has certified its Media Composer, NewsCutter, Symphony and DS software to run on the new HP Z series Workstations – the HP Z800 and HP Z400. Avid custo...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 October 2009

A day in the life of a TV lecturer

0830The Dorset country lanes give way to the flood of traffic into Poole and Bournemouth as I negotiate the rush hour streaming into the seaside town. Driving past Poole Harbour, home of Sunseeker Yachts and the RNLI reminds me that yacht I once dreamed of is still a dream. However, the job I once dreamed of became a reality when I became a televis...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 July 2009

Africans in London TV

Joseph Otieno Adamson, Managing Director of the new TV Station Africans in London or AIL TV, is a man whose enthusiasm for all things media knows no bounds. A talented musician, he attended a university course to learn to become a music producer, set up his own recording studio and later decided to extend his talents to video and the world of broad...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 June 2009

How we lit Mick

Shine a lightLets start at the beginning with the most fundamental, basic of questions – what’s the point of lighting anything, let alone a living legend like Sir Mick Jagger? The answer is simple – because lighting is the most important part of the whole process. Not the filming. Not the fiddly edit. Not the chin-scratching pre-production. The lig...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 January 2009

Aston 7 your lucky number for Sports Graphics

Aston Broadcast has been supplying CG products for long enough to know that the world of live sports graphics presentation never stands still for long. Programme directors like to push the boundaries on visual effects in order to wow the viewer and to differentiate the presentation from that of rival channels or programmes. More often than not, Ast...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 October 2008

A brief history of television graphics

Thirty years ago, television captions were routinely created by sticking white Letraset characters onto black card. Credit rolls were possible using special devices which used long strips of black material onto which the Letraset was stuck, and which were literally rolled, either by an electric motor but sometimes even by hand. There were, of cours...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 October 2008