KitPlus | Articles

Filming Underwater

Filming underwater remains one of the toughest assignments for any professional production, whether documentary or drama. There are safety concerns involved in having crew and, possibly talent, working underwater. Documentary filmmakers often operate in remote locations, far from medical aid and, especially, decompression chambers needed to treat b...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2010

AVCHD and NXCAM

I’ll be honest – up until recently I had not been a big fan of AVCHD. It promised great things but, having hired out consumer AVCHD cameras for the last few years, we knew there were still a few hurdles for it jump over. For corporate customers, to just ‘plug and play’ in terms of simple playback was impossible – some form of software was always re...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 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

Location Sound Recording And Post-production with Chris W...

Sound is often regarded as playing a subordinate role to visuals in film, TV and video production, but the finest directors and producers have insisted on taking as much care over the sonics of a production as the visuals. Of course, on smaller-scale productions, it's still often the case that the soundtrack is whatever you capture while you’re bus...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 February 2010

Location test equipment

What to look for…. SizeRuggedFast switch on timeLight weightMultiple applications from one unitDaylight readable displayLong Battery lifeSound monitoring as well as videoMountings (when you need both hands!)A number of years ago Hamlet gave itself the impossible task of developing the world’s first 3G, HD and SD capable, video and audio measurement...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 February 2010

Robotic cameras on location

Television is such a natural extension of the human senses that I doubt if more than one viewer in a thousand gives much thought to the effort put into modern programme production. Much of the original push for creative freedom came from outside broadcast crews, initially using turret-mounted optics and later zoom lenses to obtain close-ups of dist...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 February 2010

Broadcasting Audio in 5.1 Format

One of the positive consequences of digital television transmission is the ability to include fully embedded multi channel audio with suitable metadata to control both channel displacement and even sound levels within the domestic environment. While at the receiving end of the transmission chain there are many innovations and protocols to make life...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 January 2010

Film Affect

As shooting on film for TV applications is increasingly being replaced with HD, there is a growing tendency for people to wish to apply film tools and methods to origination when using the electronic medium. However, unless aiming for a specific look that cannot be achieved any other way, it can prove more time consuming and costly to work this way...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 January 2010

Pushing Air- the art of acoustic design

Acoustics is usually regarded (or often disregarded) as a black art that is practiced with no discernable science involved, with a great reliance on ears for measurement and blind faith as a method statement. Nothing could be further from the truth in the professional study of sound, with many practitioners furnished with several degrees and a weal...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 January 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

Eye to Eye: Whats new in audio 2009

Part of my day at SATIS recently was sent discussing with Neutrik the dodgy issue of sexual compatibility, a subject not mentioned in my report from the show for TV-Bay last month. I had recently invested in a Roland Edirol R-44 solid-state audio recorder. Used in conjunction with four Rode phantom-powered capacitor microphones, it makes an excelle...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 January 2010

The Prism Sound Effect

The Prism Sound Effect. When Prism Sound took over the SADiE brand last year, it embarked on a fact-finding mission to discover why the brand had such a huge and extremely dedicated international user base. This process has been extremely enlightening and has enabled Prism Sound to respond with SADiE 6 - a new product for professional sound editors...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 January 2010

The Loudness Issue in Todays Audio Systems

Complaints regarding audio being “too loud” have always existed. For example, the change from a television drama with little or no music or sound effects and quiet dialogue to a loud commercial can be quite jarring and will likely cause the viewer to reach for the volume control. This can happen when listening in mono, stereo or surround sound. The...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 January 2010

12 Frequently Asked Questions About On-Camera Lighting

1. Why/when would someone use an on-camera light? The main purpose of an on-camera light is for “fill” light. Simply put, you are just trying to remove any shadows from your talent’s face to give them a nice clean natural look. If you use too much light, however, you will drown out your background and get no depth to the video. Also, in today’s’ ru...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 December 2009

Eye to Eye: Lighting and lighting control

In 1985 I visited the Paris HQ of France Regions 3 with Arthur Garratt, a freelance science broadcaster who worked mainly for BBC World Service. FR3 was one of the first European television networks to make full use of high-efficiency ENG and EFP. We learnt a lot and were able to offer one recommendation in return. Watching a news presentation by t...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 December 2009