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The ITTP - A Review

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Five years ago a group of practitioners who were concerned about the poor training provision and a lack of common skills standards in the broadcast industry formed the ITTP. Since then there have been many meetings with senior industry figures and representatives from training organisations and educational establishments. The ITTP has received supp...

Submitted by graham reed

Published 19 October 2017

Comparing Stage and Screen

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It can be a common misconception that all forms of acting are the same, if you are good at one then it must follow that you are good at another. This is not necessarily the case and is particularly true for the two disciplines of stage and screen acting. The biggest difference between of these two types of acting is the audience. On the stage audie...

Submitted by Jo Wickham

Published 25 August 2016

Looking back at a typical day working on Top of the Pops

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A few weeks ago I was watching television and caught a bit of 'Top of the Pops ' from 1984, and I thought, 'Was this one of the programmes I worked on? ' I was privileged enough to be a staff cameraman at the BBC for 20 years, during that time I was able to work on many great shows: Only Fools and Horses, Blue Peter and Two Ronnies to name but a fe...

Submitted by graham reed

Published 14 June 2016

Camera Operation and Training Part 1

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by Peter Leverick Issue 110 - February 2016 Question: What is the difference between a Videographer and a Broadcast Cameraman?Answer: About £150/day without kit. This is a borrowed joke from an old friend of mine (name withheld, but thank you John), who was answering a facetious enquiry from a Lighting Director about his own job title compared to m...

Submitted by Peter Leverick

Published 16 March 2016

Lenses cant be that complicated can they? Part 1

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with Graham Reed Issue 108 - December 2015 Many people who use lenses have very little understanding in the complexity or the science that goes on behind them. I do not pretend to be an expert on optics but I have spent some time in trying to understand just how complex they are. I think its first just a good idea to remind ourselves of what light...

Submitted by graham reed

Published 15 December 2015

ITTP Approved Skills scheme: A progress report

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by Bernard Newnham Issue 105 - September 2015 Back in January 2015 the ITTP the Institute for Training in Television Production - held its second annual conference at Pinewood. Its a way of bringing together people from education and the industry to discuss the problems that affect both. The conferences have been highly successful, with platform se...

Submitted by Bernard Newnham

Published 01 October 2015

Are you a trainer? Keeping up to date is vital

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by Graham Reed Issue 104 - August 2015 When you are a tutor in a training organization, or if you are a lecturer teaching TV production in a university, it can be very hard to keep up-to-date with all that is going on and changing in the world of broadcast. Keeping up-to-date with developments is also very hard for those working in the industry lik...

Submitted by graham reed

Published 01 September 2015

Is working for free, training or a pathway to paid work?

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by Graham Reed Issue 102 - June 2015 I suspect like a lot of KitPlus readers I often have a look at a websites that advertise jobs, but mainly un-paid. I have frequently thought that these job offers are really just trying to get free or cheap labour for the benefit of the director/producer. One recently advertised for .... a cameraman thats enthus...

Submitted by graham reed

Published 01 July 2015

Is it my eyes, is it in focus?

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by Graham Reed Issue 100 - April 2015 Is it me or as I get older, and my eyes not as good as they were, are viewfinders getting smaller and less sharp?When I started as a cameraman the cameras were large (EMI 2001\'s) as were the viewfinders. They were large format cameras with a 30mm 4x3 sensors and the normal aperture was f 3.5, so a shallow dept...

Submitted by graham reed

Published 01 May 2015

Training for media - who should do it?

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by Martin Uren Issue 99 - March 2015 Simple enough to ask, but any possible answer to the question of who should train those working in the media industries, or more specifically the moving image industries, is complex and involves many interrelated factors. I would like to explore the issues, and maybe present some suggestions on how we might do a...

Submitted by Martin Uren

Published 01 April 2015

Education meets industry...

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by Bernard Newnham Issue 98 - February 2015 Heatherden Hall - the most famous country house you\'ve never heard of. Famous because it has appeared in large numbers of British films from Goldfinger to Carry on Camping. Why? Because it\'s the original building at the UK\'s premier film studio - Pinewood. A fitting place, then, to hold a conference on...

Submitted by Bernard Newnham

Published 01 March 2015

ITTP Conference

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by Graham Reed Issue 96 - December 2014 Plans are coming along very well for the 2015 Conference of the Institute of Training in TV Production, ITTP. The conference held last January at Pinewood Studios was a great success with many high profile speakers and there was also much lively debate between session panel members and the delegates. Since th...

Submitted by graham reed

Published 01 January 2015

Training in the video industry

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by Bob Butler Issue 95 - November 2014 I have read quite a lot recently about training in the \'Video\' industry. Whilst it is true that as a hire company we at Broadcast Services are often surprised at the lack of knowledge about equipment, we can understand it to a point, due to the ever changing digital world. Not so long ago there were only a c...

Submitted by Bob Butler

Published 01 December 2014

Training Tomorrows Technicians

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by Tony Cahalane Issue 94 - October 2014 Ours is a hungry and demanding industry. It requires a constant supply of highly skilled and dedicated technicians who are willing to work hard, under often difficult circumstances, to help deliver the environment for production teams to thrive, in an ever-evolving media landscape and one where insecurity is...

Submitted by Tony Cahalane

Published 01 November 2014

What Directors do and dont do

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by David Crossman Issue 92 - August 2014 Piers Haggard the BAFTA award-winning Director for his BBC TV work - says you can\'t teach Directing any more than you can teach Art. Piers may be right but I believe there are some directorial skills which can be passed on. Like many crew members and actors I have suffered at the hands of inexperienced Dire...

Submitted by David Crossman

Published 01 September 2014