KitPlus | Articles

NAB2010 review

Sometimes NAB can be very predictable. For me NAB 2010, or 2010 NAB SHOW as its organisers call it, was not one of those shows. The mail that arrived at my inbox on 5 April from NAB Housing, saying there were hotel room bargains still to be had, lead me to think attendance would be well down. This was certainly not like the old days when rooms were...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 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

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

Double dip 2009

Well here we go again. Christmas is coming and, yes, given market reactions and the news that Dubai’s bubble has burst, it looks likely that we are heading for the classic W – two falls into recession, a double dip. Of course, like you, I hope it won’t come to that but optimism does seem to have evaporated. Pressure also seems to be mounting in Soh...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 January 2010

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

A brief history of Cooke, the UK pioneer of motion pictur...

UK manufacturing has been dwindling for years now to the frustration of many with cheaper solutions in the Far East enabling more competitive products and so on. For this reason it was so refreshing to met with the owner of Cooke Optics, Les Zellan, and take a tour of a real factory, making real products from raw material to end products – the Cook...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 April 2009

How we lit Mick

Shine a lightLets start at the beginning with the most fundamental, basic of questions – what’s the point of lighting anything, let alone a living legend like Sir Mick Jagger? The answer is simple – because lighting is the most important part of the whole process. Not the filming. Not the fiddly edit. Not the chin-scratching pre-production. The lig...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 January 2009

A brief history of television graphics

Thirty years ago, television captions were routinely created by sticking white Letraset characters onto black card. Credit rolls were possible using special devices which used long strips of black material onto which the Letraset was stuck, and which were literally rolled, either by an electric motor but sometimes even by hand. There were, of cours...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 October 2008

Making Common Sense of Production Health and Safety

Programme preventionAs many of you may know the presenter of a well known motoring program has a bugbear with the subject of health and safety in programme making. In the past he has often attacked health and safety professionals for becoming far too wrapped up in an ‘absolute’ approach to risk management – focussing on minute detail at the expense...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 April 2008

Setting up in business: Taking on staff

Peter Savage continues his series, based on 19 years’ experience, guiding you through the stages and decisions that come with establishing your own business. So far we have looked at getting going, those anxious first days and being pro-active about building your business. Hopefully, in your fledgling company, and through your hard work and plannin...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 March 2008

A Cinematographers Companion, through hell and high water...

Miller Camera Support has never been more thoroughly tested than by Australian Cinematographer Wade Fairley, through Antarctic winters and summers, floods in Tuvalu, swamps in the Solomon Islands and the outback deserts of Australia. The most outstanding project of recent times for Wade was the trip for the BBC Natural History Unit, shooting footag...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 March 2008