KitPlus | Articles

Post Production Companies Protection

by Leighton Chenery Issue 109 - January 2016 The UK Post and VFX industry has some of the most skilled and creative talent in the World attracting work from all over the globe including many of the biggest movies from the US. We all know, however, that problems are not a rarity and whilst nobody might be to blame, you may end up having to make a di...

Submitted by Leighton Chenery

Published 21 January 2016

The 4K Conundrum

by Eric Achtmann Issue 108 - December 2015 2015 has confirmed once more that 4K remains the TV industrys Holy Grail. While 4K TV screens are becoming more affordable and Netflix, Amazon Prime and even YouTube are beginning to offer some 4K content, mass adoption is still sluggish as the increases in bandwidth required for distribution make 4K busin...

Submitted by Eric Achtmann

Published 17 December 2015

Soho shaking all over Manchester

with Alan Bradbury Issue 108 - December 2015 It was a busy time for my colleagues and I here at Soho Editors last month, but quite a telling one too. The relentless thrust northward of post-production, film, TV and broadcast services in the UK, saw us - and indeed many other companies - exhibiting at the Kitplus Tour, hosted at the MediaCityUK comp...

Submitted by Alan Bradbury

Published 15 December 2015

UHD HDR HFR WCG Made for each other, or too much too soo...

by Bruce Devlin Issue 108 - December 2015 The majority of LCD screens rolling out of the huge factories are now 4K-ready. They have a lot of pixels, and were not going to be chopping them up with a hacksaw to make small screens in a hurry. Even cheap mobile phones have more pixels than the big TV set that hangs on the wall of the front room in my h...

Submitted by Bruce Devlin

Published 15 December 2015

Sorry for any disruption caused: Netflix strikes again

by Peter Savage Issue 107 - November 2015 Netflix helped to change the TV landscape with its OTT subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service and its Originals. Could it be about to change things again by making programmes in-house? It might seem obvious to say it but what we used to call television is currently changing at great speed: and its all...

Submitted by John Smith

Published 01 December 2015

In media monitoring, as in medicine, a quick fix is not a...

by Simen Frostad Issue 107 - November 2015 A man is rushed to hospital with a suspected heart attack. The priorities of the medical team that treats him are clear: keep the patient alive, contain the damage to the heart as far as possible, stabilise the situation until the patient is out of danger. They work under the pressure of these immediate pr...

Submitted by Simen Frostad

Published 01 December 2015

Creating native looks in alien worlds: the making of The...

with Richard Baker Issue 107 - November 2015 Prime Focus Worlds Richard Baker explains how Mars was brought into stereo 3D with the help of Fusion Studio for Ridley Scotts new SciFi survival epic, The Martian Directed by SciFi master Ridley Scott, this years The Martian has all the makings of a space exploration epic to remember. The film stars Mat...

Submitted by Richard Baker

Published 01 December 2015

Ground breaking production tool

with Stefan Lange Issue 106 - October 2015 NEO¢, the latest product from British LED manufacturer Rotolight, is a revolutionary on-camera or location LED lighting fixture designed for the most demanding of professionals. NEO¢ includes several industry first features that set it apart from the field, notably amongst which is an arsenal of Cinematogr...

Submitted by Stefan Lange

Published 01 November 2015

Back to the future

by Dick Hobbs Issue 103 - July 2015 I was recently talking to the estimable James Gilbert, who runs the equally estimable graphics and automation specialist Pixel Power. He said something that made me think. We were talking about scalability, and he said that it works in two directions. There is the sort of scalability that we all readily understan...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 August 2015

The future of storage is now affordable and flexible.

by Ed Harper Issue 102 - June 2015 As the 10th anniversary of the Avid ISIS shared storage product line approaches this autumn, Ed Harper, senior product manager in the Avid ISIS collaborative storage solutions group, looks at how the company continues to innovate its flagship, flexible and scalable storage solution. Over the years, our engineering...

Submitted by Ed Harper

Published 01 July 2015

Hungerford and the 10 rules of making a Microbuster

by Miles Bullough Issue 101 - May 2015 On April 27th 2015 Wildseed Studios\' debut feature film, \'Hungerford\', launched on iTunes and begins what we hope will be a digital voyage around the world to success. We coined the term \'Microbuster\' to describe movies made on micro budgets but with blockbuster ambitions - and it perfectly captures what...

Submitted by Miles Bullough

Published 01 June 2015

Rise of the drones

by Jeremy Braben Issue 100 - April 2015 Drones are taking TV and film productions where they have never gone before. But how can they be used to best effect, what challenges do they present and will they replace helicopters in aerial filming? Jeremy Braben of Helicopter Film Services (HFS) has some of the answers... The recent explosion of unmanned...

Submitted by Jeremy Braben

Published 01 May 2015

Ask the experts: Streaming

by Motty Lentzitzky Issue 99 - March 2015 In today\'s multiscreen world, pay-TV operators are managing their customers\' video streaming experience on an ever-increasing number of devices, including TVs, PCs, smartphones, and tablets. To compound this issue, viewer expectations have changed dramatically in recent years. During this Q&A session, Mot...

Submitted by Motty Lentzitzky

Published 01 April 2015

What is the future of media creation, salaries and conten...

by Thomas Urbye Issue 97 - January 2015 Often this very question is debated by experts in our industry, but many have their own agenda, whether that be advertising creation, media buying, low budget film-making, publicly funded television, subscription based services and beyond. But what is the real future for our viewing habits, those of us workin...

Submitted by Thomas Urbye

Published 01 February 2015

Fixing it in parallel

by Daniele Siragusano Issue 97 - January 2015 Whenever something went wrong in television production, the cry was always "We\'ll fix it in post". Except that there was rarely enough time, in a broadcast schedule, to fix anything. Today we expect every programme - even routine television programmes like daily dramas - to look and sound perfect. But...

Submitted by Daniele Siragusano

Published 01 February 2015