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Capturing Eagles In Flight

Capturing Eagles In FlightAs a highly regarded wildlife cameraman, Mateo Willis is in great demand from blue chip broadcasters such as the BBC and the Discovery Channel, which employ him to work on many of their most prestigious nature documentaries. Mateo’s speciality is long-lens work and he often spends large amounts of time in remote locations...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 July 2012

Silly Plugger

I have never been to a Mobile World Congress. I take the view that exhibitions are generally noisy, uncomfortable places where the chances of learning something interesting are widely variable. NAB and IBC are must-sees, of course, but otherwise I am not a great fan of exhibitions. Although it is impossible to type its name in Word, I make an excep...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 May 2012

February is where its at

January is an overrated time of year to make new year’s resolutions. There's too much food, port and chocolate in the system to make wise decisions. February is where it's at. I've never really been one for goals, especially work related ones. At college, though we were encouraged to think more for ourselves, all our time was dictated by the exams...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2012

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

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

Learning from the master

In 1985 I took a job at Logica. In those days we were developing systems for teletext and subtitles, and later for graphics management, using computer hardware from DEC, a brand name that disappeared in 1998 when it was acquired by Compaq. The PDP-11 was revolutionary in that it was a 16 bit computer, but even then there was a suspicion that it did...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 December 2011

Guaranteed Income or working freelance

I am not a morning person. But by mid morning (so about 11am), once I’ve had my caffeine fix and something to eat, I’m good to go. Unfortunately, coffee and cake won’t make me proactive. Up until recently, my working life consisted of just working a Saturday shift operating a photo lab in a store in the local town centre. (And I’m currently still t...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 August 2011

THE RISE AND FALL AND RISE AND FALL OF POST PRODUCTION

I was sitting in the pub the other day and met an old editor mate of mine. We started chewing the cud about post-production and, inevitably, the glory days. When I first met him, in the early 80s, I hadn’t even started my career in broadcast leasing. He, meanwhile, had a money clip full of £50 notes and was the talk of the town. He didn’t have enou...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 August 2011

tv-bay questions

Q. What is your opinion on the current state of the broadcast market?Broadcast is back! Well, of course, it never went away, but the recession hit many capital projects for broadcasts all over the world and it slowed significantly. Recently, we’ve seen a significant upturn in all areas, which is good for us all. Our business has been very successfu...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2011

Mobile Cameraman Extraordinaire

I had wanted to work in television since my teens and, at 20, started as a trainee assistant cameraman at Mersey Television on 'Brookside' in Liverpool and then joining Thorn-EMI Facilities in London. Thorn-EMI put me in charge of a studio used to shoot links for companies like Children's Channel using very bulky early tubed Betacams. Five years la...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 April 2011

BBC Academy

Today’s broadcast industry depends on a mobile workforce of skilled professionals. And in the YouTube age where anyone can upload a film, what distinguishes the professional from the amateur? In short - great training!A recent survey of industry freelancers reveals that more than half rank training as one of the most important factors in developing...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2011

Tape goes West at UWE

Three years ago a convoy of white vans arrived at the Faculty of Arts at the University of West of England in Bristol. An hour later its entire stock of SVHS camcorders, linear editing decks and analog tape were history. In came Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro and Panasonic digital camcorders. Now 20 professional tapeless HD camcorders have taken up...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2011

HotTips on how to be a better lighting cameraman.

First up, don’t worry too much about HDFor most of my early career I shot with film, not video, so I usually approach things from a film point-of-view. This means I don’t see an awful lot of difference between SD and HD. In my opinion, the extra definition has more of an impact on the make-up team and the set designers because, regardless of what l...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 January 2011

Lighting up Yorkshire

The Yorkshire town of Rawmarsh looks like an easy target. Its trolley buses have come and gone and its two train stations were both wrapped up more than 40 years ago. For many years, it was the home of potters and steel workers; it was a mining town from the 15th century, an industry that survived over 500 years until it was closed by a certain rut...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 January 2011

Getting the basics right

In this column in the last issue of TV-Bay I wrote that, thanks to technology, some jobs in broadcast are now more suited to people who have no broadcast training. It was, in the way of columns at the backs of magazines, more a call for comment than a reasoned argument. As it happened, the same issue also included an article by the admirable Freddi...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 January 2011