KitPlus | Articles

Making the grade

As we enjoy the Summer of 2010 the UK production industry remains in the grip of recession. Also, as noted in the recent UK Screen report, competition within the post production industry is damaging its own members with dangerous price wars. However, the biggest threat is coming from another direction – production companies and agencies bringing in...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 September 2010

Business advcie from the football pitch

Much has been written in the press about the performance of the beleaguered England football team during the World Cup and particularly Fabio Capello’s management. It seems that Capello was the root of the team’s problems, so this month I have analysed our performance through some very simply management headings to see how we could take some key le...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 August 2010

Game, Set and Media Management

A week into Wimbledon and my chances of getting there this year seemed to be dwindling fast. A late call on Friday afternoon though from Timeline TV rekindled my hopes of not only seeing a bit of tennis but getting an exclusive tour around the Wimbledon Broadcast Centre. Always one to grab the opportunity to see both tennis and kit in action my nex...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 August 2010

Eye to Eye: Sports Production

I was somewhat crestfallen to receive the advice 'Lay off 3D' when I rang TV Bay for guidance on the theme for this month's Eye to Eye. For better or worse, 3D looks set to be a major part of sports television in the coming years. But I picked up my crest, closed one eye and carried on running. Long-range opticsIt is by now quite widely appreciated...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 July 2010

A dream budget

As the coalition government prepares its emergency budget, Peter Savage looks at what is planned and tells us what he thinks the government should do. Apologies to avid readers of this column that there wasn’t one in the last issue. The editors decided on an article on the effects of the general election on our industries and, sod’s law, the deadli...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 July 2010

Doremi Silver Anniversary

It was 25 years ago that Doremi founder and CEO Camille Rizko, invented a better way to perform digital audio for postproduction. He was joined by his brother Emil, and fellow engineer Safar Ghazal. And so from humble beginnings in the San Fernando Valley, California, the Doremi partners have never looked back. In 1985, the entertainment industry w...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 May 2010

Exhibiting at CABSAT first time feedback

CABSAT started with a curious phenomenon. Rain in the desert. It was PHABRIX’s first time in Dubai exhibiting its test and measurement products at CABSAT and we’d obviously brought the weather with us. Now rain in Dubai is like a severe snowstorm in the UK – everything stops. As the Emirates plane, equipped with a front video camera, displayed our...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 May 2010

Business lessons from tennis

It was interesting reading Rachel Bridge’s article in the Sunday Times this week, whilst watching Andy Murray lose to Roger Federer in the final of the Australian Open. Rachel is the paper’s enterprise editor and her column is always worth a general look (though I sometimes wonder, cheekily, if she plagiarizes my articles). And now you are wonderin...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2010

Looking back, and forward to the next decade of media pro...

The year 2000 doesn’t seem that long ago – and what’s for certain is that as you get older ten years is a very short space of time. A decade is a long time in technology though. In 1999 most people didn’t have a mobile phone and weren’t even on the internet at home, painfully slow dial-up was the only option for most. A decade on, the internet is a...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2010

Location Sound Recording And Post-production with Chris W...

Sound is often regarded as playing a subordinate role to visuals in film, TV and video production, but the finest directors and producers have insisted on taking as much care over the sonics of a production as the visuals. Of course, on smaller-scale productions, it's still often the case that the soundtrack is whatever you capture while you’re bus...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 February 2010

The Prism Sound Effect

The Prism Sound Effect. When Prism Sound took over the SADiE brand last year, it embarked on a fact-finding mission to discover why the brand had such a huge and extremely dedicated international user base. This process has been extremely enlightening and has enabled Prism Sound to respond with SADiE 6 - a new product for professional sound editors...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 January 2010

New Light in the Forbidden City

IBC 2009’s Production Village was the venue for the launch of a revolutionary new lighting product, the Rotolight ‘Stealth Edition’ RL48 ring-light. Although the show had more than 48,000 visitors and over 1200 exhibitors, Rotolight was listed in the TV-Bay lighting category, featured in the IBC News and the ‘Eye Catcher’ technology report on Amste...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 December 2009

3D Post

The state of 3DRewind a couple of years and 3D was a hot topic but there was very little production and few companies able to offer suitable support for efficient 3D post production. Many people thought it would fade, as before. A few even hoped it would go away! Now many are supporting stereoscopic 3D. The most activity is in the DI (digital post...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 October 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

Top Gear Test Drive Hovercam

Hovercam were contacted to work on some new ideas for Top Gear back in January 2009. The production team were keen on trying new ideas to put a different perspective on the cars that are tested for performance around their test track at Dunsfold, Surrey. Typically the program has featured two-dimensional imagery of super cars, so the idea was to br...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 September 2009