KitPlus | Articles

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

IBC 2019 Question Time

The media and entertainment industry is in an exciting period of transformation and innovation, and Signiant is thrilled to be in the midst of it. Nowhere was this energy more apparent than at this year’s IBC conference, where we had the opportunity to speak with a wide range of organizations, vendors, and thought leaders to better understand where...

Submitted by Jon Finegold

Published 03 November 2019

Centre Stage for Cameras with All About Eve

Taking its inspiration from the classic 1950 film, Ivo van Hove’s stage production of All About Eve, starring Gillian Anderson as theatre darling, Margo Channing, and Lily James as the eponymous Eve, retains the themes of ageing, celebrity and obsession. The piece, produced by Sonia Friedman Productions and Fox Stage Productions garnered stellar re...

Submitted by Anthony Newton

Published 16 July 2019

TV Futures - The Shadowing Experience

My name is Daniel Jones, and it is no accident that I’m currently studying BSc (Hons) Television and Broadcasting at the University of Portsmouth. Since completing GSCE media studies I have been constantly questioning what I watch with questions such as, “Wow, how was that filmed?” or “That looks amazing, I wonder how long that took?” It should com...

Submitted by Daniel Jones

Published 21 March 2019

State of the Nation - January 2019

I’m writing these thoughts on the morning of 20 December. From my desk in Tunbridge Wells I am normally gently aware of air traffic at five thousand feet, lining up to land at Gatwick Airport. Today it is silent: since 9.00 last night some idiot has been flying drones across the runway. An airport is a finely tuned machine, with all the interconnec...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs - new

Published 24 January 2019

The Brutal Kit Environment of Education

The customerMiddlesex University is a highly successful and progressive University with a modern campus. Ranked No.1 in London overall for career prospects in Film Production and Photography, its portfolio also includes animation, journalism, graphic design and digital media, amongst others. The setupSpeaking to Daniel Sosnowski, Faculty Technical...

Submitted by Peter Savage 2

Published 24 January 2019

Creating Authentic Content That Counts

We’re deep into the 2010’s and the way in which we consume content has changed forever. Broadcasters and content owners are fighting for eyeballs in a saturated market where consumers are watching their favourite shows on different devices across a number of platforms. To target millennials and younger generations, who generally consume short burst...

Submitted by Frank le Mair

Published 08 September 2018

DJI Ronin-S Review

Any self respecting filmmaker starts their edits with their best shots, so let me try to do the same in my writing:My top tip when buying a DJI product is to buy from a local and reputable dealer rather than direct from DJI; sending any faulty item back to Holland at your own expense can be costly. That’s not to say much has gone wrong over the yea...

Submitted by Tim Bearder

Published 08 September 2018

Dedo DLED3 Microlighting Kit Review

Having recently had the immense pleasure of getting my hands on the new Minisoftbox adapter ring for the Dedo DLED3 that takes the soft box that fits the standard DLH4 & DLED7. Size matters here! I discovered that there is only about a half stop difference between the DLED7 and the DLED3 output at the surface of the diffusion fabric which is amazin...

Submitted by Jonathan Harrison

Published 18 July 2018

TV Futures, Tales on Location

If I think back to last May, I was just finishing my second year at the University of Portsmouth, studying Television and Broadcasting, and winding down for the summer. Then out of the blue I got a message from my course leader, saying I might be getting a call from someone who was a location manager working for Raider productions, you know, the pr...

Submitted by Georgia Thirtle

Published 26 March 2018

Speed in a Changing Media Landscape

We are living in the video era - the staggering statistics on video growth make that abundantly clear. According to Cisco’s Visual Networking Index: Forecast and Methodology 2016–2021, video will make up 82 percent of all consumer internet traffic by 2021, an increase from 73 percent in 2016. To put this in perspective, “it would take an individual...

Submitted by Mike Nash

Published 08 February 2018

Swimrun World Championships - LiveU report

Through the open waters and across the islands of the Swedish wilderness, battling the elements in the OTILLO Swimrun World Championship isn\'t for the faint-hearted. The total distance is 75 kilometres, of which 10 km are open-water swimming and 65 km are trail-running, presenting a huge physical - and doubtless mental - challenge. Taking place in...

Submitted by Kim Svensson - new

Published 04 April 2017

Does the cloud have substance?

Just at the moment, every customer we talk to wants to move to the cloud. It is not just a techno-buzzword: people are really attracted by it. The idea of getting rid of all hardware and letting someone else worry about keeping machine rooms alive seems like a good plan. And they sometimes feel a bit deflated when we talk quietly and calmly about w...

Submitted by Ciaran Doran

Published 04 April 2017

Streaming and the need for continued innovation

In a fast-changing world, audio producers need to adapt quickly in order to keep up. Media consumption is changing - fast. Almost without anyone noticing, we have passed the tipping point. Only a few years ago we were discussing streaming as an emerging technology; yet now, according to a recent Deloitte survey, streaming has overtaken live TV as t...

Submitted by Jon Schorah - new

Published 04 April 2017

Interrontrons - a prompting gimmick or a real production...

The first question for many is what is an Interrotron? Essentially it is the use of a traditional prompter but instead of the words in the script the presenter sees the interviewer\'s or director\'s face. This technique was pioneered by American film director Errol Morris in his film The Fog of War which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Fe...

Submitted by Jon Hilton#

Published 24 August 2016