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A grand boy

I am smiling a particularly content smile while writing this month’s column, as just a couple of days ago I met one of my great heroes, and a giant amongst broadcasters: Sir David Attenborough. He is the recipient of the IBC International Honour for Excellence this year, and I was directing a video interview with him to use as part of the awards ce...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 2011

What are the most important opportunities and challenges...

What are the most important opportunities and challenges facing the TV industry today?To answer this question we need to look more broadly at consumer behaviour and the changing way people are consuming content. Viewers no longer solely want a passive experience with a TV programme in their front room. They want to watch catch-up TV on a laptop, do...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 May 2011

Television, the limits of the possible

When I was a young scribbler in 1970, my then employers allowed me to launch and run on their behalf a magazine called Studio Sound. It was one of my better career moves and survived (mainly thanks to me leaving it in 1974) for about 35 years. Fairly good going for a trade publication. The upside of editing Studio Sound was being invited to a bean-...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 February 2011

HD Post Production

In a parallel universe all forms of electronic entertainment are produced and presented in identical formats that can be exchanged and retrieved by anyone with permission to access the product. Unfortunately in our universe the opposite is true and a frustrated band of audio and video heroes spend every day of their working lives trying to satisfy...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 September 2010

A conversation with Peter Harman, Vinten Product Manager

Vinten is celebrating its centenary in 2010. What were the origins of the business?William Vinten was an engineer with a passion for quality. He set himself in business to repair friends’ bicycles at the age of 13, did a full apprenticeship in a machine shop, and worked for Frederick Lamplough, the steam car pioneer. But it was seeing his first mov...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010

NAB2010 review

Sometimes NAB can be very predictable. For me NAB 2010, or 2010 NAB SHOW as its organisers call it, was not one of those shows. The mail that arrived at my inbox on 5 April from NAB Housing, saying there were hotel room bargains still to be had, lead me to think attendance would be well down. This was certainly not like the old days when rooms were...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010

Eye to Eye: Getting a grip

Getting a gripCameras and camcorders are shrinking at such a rapid rate that a lot of today's established support devices are looking completely out of scale. In some aisles of the NAB 2010 Central Hall, visitors were at perpetual risk of colliding with excited demonstrators nipping hither and yon with hand-held stabilisers for DSLRs. Most were onl...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010

With Polecam to the Antarctic

Whale Wars is a documentary-style reality television series that airs on Animal Planet, and follows the activities of the eco-activist group, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Last year, I was aboard Sea Shepherd’s flagship, “Steve Irwin” as Director of Photography and, along with a 5-man camera team, documented the “war” between the Japanese whal...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 May 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

A day in the like of a location manager

One of the most dramatic moments I have witnessed whilst filming a series called Dempsey and Makepeace was in Limehouse Basin, not looking at all like it does today. It had a swing bridge, where you could cause the most enormous traffic jam if you kept it open long enough and get mentioned on the local traffic news, which we did manage quite succes...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 February 2010

De Wolfe Celebrates Centenary

De Wolfe Music Publishers, the longest-running independent film and television music library resource in the world, is celebrating its remarkable centenary this year. Over the last hundred years, the music library’s vast collection of instantly recognisable and iconic tracks has helped shape popular culture; if you've ever seen Man About The House,...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 January 2010

Musical matches for your production

The best production you've ever created is in the can. It's time to match your masterpiece with an equally impressive musical soundtrack. But where to start? It's time to dispel the myth that music licensing is complex or expensive and to understand what options are available to you. Firstly, let's get one thing straight. Music, a bit like lunch, i...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 January 2010

Supporting the RED

James Cullen was working as a studio cameraman for the BBC when he was asked by television quiz show favourite CJ de Mooi to shoot a promo for him. The brief was to showcase CJ’s enthusiasm for the Porsche 911 Carrera, and Cullen knew that the production standards had to match the engineering excellence of the car. “I was using a RED One camera whi...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 November 2009

Digital Vision case study

The Edit Store, based in London’s W1, is one of the last few independent facilities in the city. Spread across two buildings, the Edit Store provides many of the world’s leading broadcasters with offline, online, grading and audio dubbing facilities primarily for broadcast factual programmes. At the heart of its HD grading suite, introduced in 2008...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 October 2009

What do Location Managers do all day?

It’s a question that is often asked by my family who fondly believe I spend my time in idle chit-chat and gossip with high-powered film and media executives sipping skinny-latte Mocachinos (whatever they are!) and eating sushi. But consider the following exciting ‘James Bond’ style scenario. “Our hero and heroine are on the run, driving fast throug...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 March 2009