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London to Capetown, by bike Part 2

Continuing Frank’s journey after leaving Nigeria….. I arrived in Cameroun at the beginning of the wet season and it had been raining constantly for a week before I got there. The road was in a horrendous state. It was a two hundred kilometre long mudbath, in some places the mudholes were two metres below the normal road height. My bike fully loaded...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 November 2008

Screen and Music Travel

What do Screen and Music Travel do?Screen and Music Travel are specialist travel agents to the television and film industries. We move film crews (many of whom are probably your readers) to destinations all over the world. We have many deals in place with a number of airlines, for discounts on excess baggage charges, for passengers travelling with...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 November 2008

Marshall masters LCD

Marshall Electronics has made huge strides in the LCD picture monitor market, with a practical package that fits with many of today’s applications and circumstances. Its LCD panels are light and compact, saving space and weight – obviously very attractive for OB vans. The monitors are recognised for their value for money while frequently winning si...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 November 2008

Stryder TV Brick House Video User Report

Stryder TV is based in Oxfordshire and for decades we have provided both British and International broadcasters with a complete video production services. Our camera crews have operated in 45 countries from the Arctic to the Tropics and we produce anything from web content to beaming live pictures across the world with our satellite truck. We neede...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 October 2008

London to Capetown, by bike part 1

South Africans are known for being to the point, so when I was told that I had done the whole thing ‘Arse Backwards’ I wasn’t unduly upset, but I did feel a need to justify the way I had approached this project. I had just arrived in Cape Town and was rather pleased with myself, having just completed a year long journey through some of Africa’s mos...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 October 2008

Mixing with the wildlife on Springwatch

As the 5th series of ‘Springwatch’ draws to a close I’d like to share with you an insider view of one of my favourite vision mixing jobs. As a freelance vision mixer I work across the board on all sorts of programmes: quiz & chat shows, sports, drama, music & Light Entertainment, recorded & live, studio-based or Outside Broadcast. But for four week...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 October 2008

Fancy a trip from Beijing to Paris in our Landrover?

That’s more or less how it happened, not months of planning or deciding I needed adventure in my life, just “Fancy the trip”. Of course no money in it (when is their ever?) but who could pass up such an offer. Dave at Broadcast Services in Chertsey had been preparing a Landrover for the journey for some months having acquired a left hand drive mode...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 September 2008

tv-bay interviews Malcolm Robinson

How long have you been with Sony?Just over 4 yearsAnd where were you before?I originally trainedat Ravensbourne before moving to CNN where I worked on stories such as the Russian Coup. I then worked for Cine Video where amongst others covered the West Indies cricket tours. After working for Visions I contracted for 4 years before moving to Sony. Wh...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 August 2008

Dont Drink from the Mainstream.

Here’s the note pinned on the studio door of Undercurrents productions in South Wales. To do list for 20081) Make 10 new video series on topics ranging from Woodland skills to Technology reviews and from Political news to investigative documentaries. 2) Develop a desktop video player application based upon the open source software. 3) Launch an Int...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 August 2008

Getting up to speed with IPTV

Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) has been gathering pace around the world for the past few years and is major competition to cable and satellite broadcasters. As a satellite subscriber its something I seem to have largely overlooked and the recent IPTV World Forum prompted me to get up to speed on this emerging format of TV delivery and called f...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 August 2008

Everything you ever wanted to know about lighting Part 1

Anyone starting on the long and winding road of lighting might well be baffled at the number of very different approaches that he or she might find in books and articles. I certainly did, and that was probably because my training in Television had been engineering based, where the very nature of engineering provides specific answers to specific pro...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 August 2008

CTV OB Truck

Responding to the growing demand for HD broadcasts and with a fleet of already overworked outside broadcast trucks, CTV Outside Broadcast’s newest addition to its fleet, OB 9, is a fully-equipped production facility with the latest in High Definition production, mixing and recording equipment. Targeted squarely at major entertainment and sporting e...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 July 2008

OB HD and budget constraints

In a perfect world every OB would be built on a brand new chassis and filled with the latest state-of-the art equipment, all funded from a limitless budget. But, in the real world, where budgets and timescales are limited, often far tighter than might seem practical, more realistic solutions have to be found. One approach, for which E2E has already...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 July 2008

A hidden beauty

The lifestyle of the Wildlife cameraman (and woman) you’d have thought, and I was hoping, was all exotic locations and beautiful scenery. Except for me the reality was a murky, water filled quarry during a very cold winter and early spring of 2006- 07. But to come face to face with a real homegrown legend I was more than ready to take the plunge. T...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 July 2008

The Reflecmedia Chromaflex portable chromakey system

The use of keying a foreground image over a background image to form a composite is an established and widely used technique in film and TV production. For most cameramen this will usually involve them in shooting a subject against a coloured background, typically green or blue. Sounds simple but reality can be far from it, anecdotes abound of nigh...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 May 2008