KitPlus | Articles

Key Grip Woolf Secures the Gear for GUILLERMO DEL TOROS P...

Jonathan Woolf has gathered a wealth of trade secrets from half a century working in the motion picture industry. His recent chapters have led him to key grip the miniatures unit on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy and act as a lighting technician on the 2022 Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio. Woolf’s big job on Pinocchio was to find reliable...

Submitted by Kathryn Ferentchak

Published 08 September 2023

AJA Video Systems - Ki Pro GO User Review with Spellbinde...

For most of us 2020 enforced a step change in the way we work and the kind of productions that our businesses have been delivering. Back in March as the pandemic struck, I took a leap of faith and invested in some switching and streaming kit, in the form of a Tricaster Mini, encoding and NDI kit and some extra cameras. Fast forward nine months and...

Submitted by Ben Sherriff

Published 22 December 2020

In Ear Monitors Help The Cast And Crew of Americas Got Ta...

Capturing performances for television is a stressful business, especially if the programme is being filmed live. You want everything to be perfect but you are also aware that many things can go wrong, even with the best laid plans. Reducing the list of potential disasters is therefore high on any production crew’s agenda and one area where it is po...

Submitted by KitPlus

Published 21 December 2020

How to engage students with live projects

For many employers, how and what we teach at university is sometimes considered to be very mysterious. The responsibility for creating the structure and content within the curriculum is the responsibility of academics. In my experience, the best method for making sure that students and staff are kept up to date with current working practices is to...

Submitted by Martin Andrews

Published 26 March 2020

Eye Contact in Documentaries

Eye contact filming (where the interview subject speaks directly into the lens) is now more common in documentaries. But it hasn’t always been possible or acceptable for filmmakers to do. When I studied Screen Documentary in 1998, I was taught that the subject should look to the left or right of the screen. As an interviewer, I sat close to the cam...

Submitted by Sybil Ah-Mane

Published 27 January 2020

State Of The Nation: Securing The Future

This magazine is a notable champion for education in our industry, and deserves much praise for its efforts. To my mind, there is all too little concern for our future. I have previously taken up your time in these pages on the subject of creating the next generation of talent, but I am largely unrepentant that I am going to do it again. Pretty muc...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs - new

Published 03 November 2019

A Place For Placements - TVFutures

I've been interested in media all my life… making short films with my mates in Windows Movie Maker when I was little... I never really knew where I wanted to go career wise, but I knew I always liked video production. So it will come as no surprise that I chose a degree that would provide that outlet, and I hoped that dedicating three Years to stud...

Submitted by Luca Di-Maio

Published 03 November 2019

Never Stop Learning....Or Spending

I’m over 75, and have been a member of the Bristol Film and Video Society (www.bristolvideo.org.uk) for several decades. Like the great majority of members, I am not and never have been a video professional but have video interests beyond the club and its productions. For some time I have been recording lectures (for other clubs) using a Panasonic...

Submitted by Peter Heaven

Published 03 November 2019

Increasing Diversity in the UK Indie Market

London director Sam Addo tells us more about how he aims to change the status quo when it comes to onscreen diversity with his new feature, Cards on the Table. “Over the past thirty years, filmmakers have made movies telling a wide range of stories, however, in my humble opinion, those with disabilities, from the LGBTQ+ community and or those from...

Submitted by Sam Addo

Published 10 September 2019

Lighting with Gurdip Mahal

Gurdip Mahal’s credits for lighting design are impressive. Including major Awards shows such as BBC Sports Personality of the Year, Children in Need, as well as The Voice, Top Gear and Crystal Maze, his CV would almost certainly include at least one show with which any one of us is familiar. In addition, he has applied his own particular style to p...

Submitted by Ian Muir

Published 04 June 2019

Behind the Scenes of Wild rose

Financed by BFI Film Fund, Wild Rose tells the story of a musician from Glasgow who dreams of becoming a Nashville star. The only thing in the way: her own penchant for crime and violence. Starring Jessie Buckley, the film begins just as its talented antihero, Rose-Lynn, is first released on parole after having spent a year in jail on a drug charge...

Submitted by KitPlus

Published 04 June 2019

4k and HDR Wireless Camera Transmitters

Across the globe, live events represented over 50 percent of the most watched TV programs last year. However, big budget episodic shows are impacting live TV and the way viewers want to see their content. Viewers are demanding the same quality of production for live event broadcasts as they see in pre-recorded TV series and films. Producers of live...

Submitted by David Edwards

Published 21 March 2019

Preserving the British Film Institute Archive

Today, the media and entertainment industry faces numerous challenges. To remain successful and competitive, these organisations must be ever innovative, agile and cost efficient in the way they produce, store, manage and distribute their digital assets. Content creators have traditionally relied upon outdated storage models, comprised of legacy in...

Submitted by David Feller

Published 21 March 2019

Grading BBC Sounds

The BBC has launched its new personalised music, radio and podcast app with a campaign that follows one listener’s journey from meeting Kylie Minogue in a lift to Idris Elba on a bus. BBC Sounds offers a single home for the BBC’s thousands of hours of audio content, including live and on-demand shows and special music mixes curated by artists. BBC...

Submitted by Simone Grattarola

Published 25 January 2019

The Biggest Toy Shop in the World

When Nigel Woodford started his career at BBC Wood Norton in 1962, television was black and white and BBC Two had not yet been launched. In 2018 Nigel will retire, and Richmond Film Services, the pro-audio equipment rental company set up by Nigel in 1973, can count numerous contributions to iconic moments in British cultural, sporting and film hist...

Submitted by Emma Morrison

Published 08 September 2018