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Radio cameras bring a live broadcast to life

Radio cameras bring a live broadcast to life - especially news, sports and studio shows - by their ability to roam around and move in closer to a subject. They capture a more natural spectator\'s view than a camera that is fixed at one point, and usually get the most intimate shots and the most exciting angles in a production. Today they are indisp...

Submitted by Tony Valentino

Published 13 January 2017

Television is dead, long live television

After decades of operating within the same fundamental model, the walls around our world - what was the broadcast world, or "vertical", in marketing terms - are crumbling. NAB 2016 clearly showed this and IBC 2016 took it one step further: momentum is strengthening as we push towards an IP future. The TVB2020 conference earlier this year also refle...

Submitted by Ephraim Barrett

Published 07 December 2016

Scopes, a creative trilogy

The purpose of color correction is to fix any problems with exposure and color, ensuring the final image looks right. Color grading is used to set the mood by adjusting the colors of the video imagery to achieve a certain look or feel. At the core of color correction is tonal range: the range of brightness from dark (black) to light (white). When t...

Submitted by Paul Issacs

Published 07 December 2016

Space lights and a man called Bill

The Space Light has become one of those universally used fixtures which inhabit many film sound stages, as well as finding employment within studio-based broadcast productions. Its history, not completely lost in the sands of time, is very much part of the evolution of the British film industry, whilst its use extends now to Hollywood and beyond. F...

Submitted by Ian Muir

Published 07 December 2016

Hacking Hell

There was a really scary story in the news a week or two ago. In the words of Yves Bigot, director-general of TV5 Monde, "we were a couple of hours from having the whole station gone for good". What happened to this highly respected broadcaster was that malicious hackers set out to destroy the network\'s systems. That has to be an alarm call for al...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 07 December 2016

Selecting the right broadcast minicam lens

So we all know that HD and 4K (and beyond) is the norm for content creation and delivery, with the need for unique and versatile shots being offered to increase the audiences participation and visual experiences. A major factor aside from the camera itself is the selection of lens, for some of the UHD sensor formats a broad spectrum of "off the she...

Submitted by Steffan Hewitt

Published 10 November 2016

Make a scifi film in the Mexican Desert

British director Nicolas Roeg once said to me that making a film is like horse racing. To start with you give the horse a nudge to get him moving, then as you gather speed there's a point where you have to trust the horse. You hold on and the horse will carry you across the finish line. I've just returned home from shooting a Sci-fi proof-of-concep...

Submitted by Edward Andrews

Published 26 September 2016

Shooting the WRC Rally

Mark bites the dust for his art and lives to tell the tale... A look at my website will confirm I don\'t just shoot cars, I cover a wide range of genres. But I have shot in and around cars through my career. Early on I joined a facilities company specialising in the design and build of onboard camera systems for F1 and Motorcycle GP live TV coverag...

Submitted by Mark Sallaway

Published 25 August 2016

Are you female and going to IBC

Trade shows within this industry can be hard enough to survive for anyone, let alone as a woman when women make up less than 10% of the general populace. There are undoubtedly some benefits to being the minority (as there are with many things); I\'ve never had to queue for the toilets for a start. However, feedback we have collated from our FBI dat...

Submitted by Sadie Groom

Published 25 August 2016

Tips on how to reduce your exposure to business crime

Business Crime is growing in popularity and is cunning, smart, and very convincing. It is being spurred on by the very technology that is supposed to help media and other businesses improve performance. One of the trending frauds is \'Social Engineering\' where criminals can make use technology, and trickery to exploite our human nature. Here we ou...

Submitted by Phil Bower

Published 25 August 2016

The future of timing and timecode

It is SMPTE\'s 100th anniversary! I hope that all readers have had a chance to view the Centennial Video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN2yYrEFMFQ) and to contemplate that 100 years ago we were in the dawn of the cinema era, where different equipment used different frame rates, different sprocket sizes, different frame sizes and the concept of d...

Submitted by Bruce Devlin

Published 24 August 2016

The return of the Minimoog

The iconic Minimoog is making a return and a return well worth the wait! As this was the world\'s first portable synthesizer and became the role model for all electronic keyboards, the Minimoog Model D was and now is a synthesiser force to be reckoned with. First released in the 1970\'s, it became popular worldwide and attracted attention for its f...

Submitted by Beth Zarkosh

Published 24 August 2016

Innovations getting you ready for the transition

There has been much speculation about the migration away from cable and the potential disappearance of set top boxes. However, regardless of what happens in the future, we cannot escape the fact that a multitude of sources is streaming content into people's living rooms and this is having a significant impact in consumer's use and choice of devices...

Submitted by Menno Koopmans

Published 22 July 2016

OTT - is it over the top or business as usual

OTT is a term that is casually bandied about as though everyone knows what it is, but is there really a single definition? Hopefully this little guide will have you speaking the jargon like a native!OTT stands for Over The Top. If you're into linguistics, then the first question that comes to mind is "What are A & B in the sentence: A is going over...

Submitted by Bruce Devlin

Published 22 July 2016

Seeing things with a 360 viewpoint

One of the benefits of working in teaching support is you often get opportunities to explore and experiment with lots of new kit that has been purchased for teaching or research. I have spent the past couple of years supporting the activities that take place within the Creative and Cultural Industries TV Studios (CCI TV for short) at the University...

Submitted by Michael Parsons

Published 22 July 2016