KitPlus | Articles

ARE QUALIFICATIONS RECOGNISED?

In a recent survey of 1,000 employers in various industries about whether job applicants possess the skills to thrive in the work place, more then half of employers said finding qualified applicants was difficult. It appears that many companies in our industry are pretending that all is well. They must believe because as so many people want to work...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2012

Looking for the connection

This time last year I wrote a column which looked back. This year I have set myself the infinitely more challenging task of looking forward. What are the hot topics for 2012?The first prediction is easy. Television coverage of the Olympics and Paralympics will be extraordinary, capturing all the skill and dedication, elation and heartbreak of the w...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 February 2012

Quality is the best policy

Despite all the changes in our industry at the moment – and maybe because of them – quality is more important than ever. HD has become the production standard norm. Why have audiences embraced HD so enthusiastically? Because it looks and sounds great. If you have a 42” or bigger screen in your home then the difference between SD and HD is obvious t...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 February 2012

Managing Media

Looking after the media for a television production used to be a relatively simple task. The footage would be shot and captured on tape. The tapes would be delivered to the post-production facility for editing. They would be ingested into the edit system, the editor would construct the final program and it would be recorded back to tape. All the ta...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 February 2012

Grading across the Atlantic

In the last five years, color correction has made leaps and bounds in terms of the way we grade, the performance capabilities of grading systems and even the locations where we grade. Only a few years ago, color correction suites were isolated rooms that were nearly impossible to connect to other offices or artists. But the color world has changed...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 February 2012

Real-Time Frame Rate Conversion in a Tapeless Workflow

Introduction - (for the full diagramatic version of this article please click on the magazine cover above.)When content moved within facilities and around the world on tape or via live feeds, frame rate and format conversions were easily achieved using real-time hardware converters such as Snell's Alchemist Ph.C-HD. As broadcasters and content owne...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 February 2012

2011 wasnt all that bad for TV & Commercials, was it?...

2011 was pretty depressing, reading the paper or watching the news was a miserable experience, and all in all, those who still have a job, or have a business should apparently be chuffed to bits!Manufacturers have had a torrid 2011 with various disasters striking key supply lines around the world, meaning shortage of tape stock, and now hard drives...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 February 2012

Convergence Grading for Stereoscopic 3D Broadcast with Da...

After soldiering through a long run of freelance work in Soho, I had a couple of days off. I thought, “It’ll be nice to relax a little bit,” which is when I got the call. “We have this project with quite a tight turnaround, a couple of days to deliver 75 minutes worth of 3D.” I told them to hold on — this would be my first 3D job. They replied, “It...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 January 2012

How a live streaming launch comes together....

Well it’s that time of year again. CALL of DUTY Launch. That’s right it’s been a whole year since I wrote about the successful launch of Call of Duty Black Ops, and now we have the new Call of Duty MW3 launch. Just as last year, myself as part of the Mediakinetic team were once again asked by Headstream and Five by Five Digital to live stream the l...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 January 2012

The best job of the year so far!

I'm very nostalgic. Blame it on too much Austen and Bronte at a young age. I love photographs, how they pinpoint a moment in time that you can never reclaim. Especially spontaneous photos that capture just how you were feeling, (no matter how unflattering it is!). I also have a habit of reflecting on the past, looking at where I was, what I was doi...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 January 2012

Choosing a Mixer for 3D Events

VIDEOFORCE is a company with modern ideas and a fresh outlook. After starting in Linkping in 1999, it added a new Stockholm base in 2010. The company specialises in video for events providing technical equipment such as cameras, flightpacks, LED displays, projectors, screens, vision mixers and converters as well as the operations and production per...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 January 2012

Reaching for 3D

From the opening shot of the Ryder Cup to the Champions League final when Manchester United played Barcelona this year, a stately homes documentary to a Derren Brown magic show, cameraman Chris Taber has been there, filmed it and got the T-shirt. And the reason the camera crane operator has been in demand for so many high-profile jobs? In a word: 3...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 January 2012

Without training will there be future for the TV Industry...

It might come as a surprise to you but do you know that there in the UK 80,000 people working in the TV industry. That's 10% of the work force. And some more facts:The UK has overseas programme sales of £980 million. Non-terrestrial TV spends £193 millions on content whilst terrestrial TV spends £2.6 billion on content. Independent producers in the...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 January 2012

Ten Top Tips For OB Operators Fuel Economy

As fuel prices around the world hit a record high, every driver is looking for ways to squeeze as many miles as possible from every precious gallon or litre. If you are a broadcaster with a fleet of Outside Broadcast vehicles, how do you stop fuel overheads from rocketing and eating in to your hard earned profits?Recognising that fuel is not a disc...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 January 2012

Sennheiser MKH 8060, 8070 and MKE1 Lapel microphone revie...

Sennheiser recently asked me to review two new MKH series microphones, and a new Lapel MKE 1I had a job coming up and I thought this would be the perfect time to try the two MKH microphones out. The job was a TV commercial. We would shoot on the beach and in Jumeirah Beach Park. For my set up, I decided I would use a PSC Alphamix Mixer, a Sound Dev...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 January 2012