KitPlus | Articles

Key Grip Woolf Secures the Gear for GUILLERMO DEL TOROS P...

Jonathan Woolf has gathered a wealth of trade secrets from half a century working in the motion picture industry. His recent chapters have led him to key grip the miniatures unit on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy and act as a lighting technician on the 2022 Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio. Woolf’s big job on Pinocchio was to find reliable...

Submitted by Kathryn Ferentchak

Published 08 September 2023

The Future of Broadcast Technology

What vision do you have of the broadcast technology business moving towards 2030 and beyond?We are currently in the middle of a transition phase with migration to several new technologies, from the move to IP-based infrastructure and the shift from linear to video-on-demand (VOD). The question for all of us is how long that transition phase will l...

Submitted by Sebastian Richter

Published 18 August 2022

Using Modern Technology at Envy Provides a View into the...

As Jai Cave, ENVY’s technical operations director put it, “in a way, we are the cloud to our customers and partners.”ENVY’s use of modern technology, including remote edit capabilities and their expansive use of Signiant Media Shuttle, enables them to collaborate with customers and partners around the world, and made the transition to remote work d...

Submitted by Michael Darer

Published 09 December 2020

State of the Nation and Virtual Social Distancing

Under normal circumstances, I usually make my plans for NAB in November time. It’s when the airlines tend to have sales. This year, for personal reasons, I did not get around to booking back then, and it was only at the end of February that I could start thinking about it. Well, the airline sales had long gone, and I was faced with the prospect of...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs - new

Published 26 March 2020

Why Renting is the New Buying

To rent or to buy? This has long been a topic of debate in the world of property, with people having to choose between spending virtually all of their money up front or giving their money away each month with little chance of seeing a return. How does this apply to the media and entertainment sector? Well, the need to constantly evolve to stay ahea...

Submitted by Ed Tischler

Published 26 March 2020

CVP Helps Productions Choose the Right Lens for the Job

CVP Technical Specialist, Sam Measure, on how the company’s free online Lens Coverage and Camera Comparison tool is giving something back to the filmmaking community. One of the standout trends over the past year has been the move to shooting Full Frame, with more and more productions choosing to go down this route for the special look it brings to...

Submitted by Sam Measure

Published 27 January 2020

State of the Nation - Getting Connected

We are all familiar with statistics about the growth of the internet. Cisco’s latest report, for instance, says that global IP traffic is increasing at 26% a year, and will reach 4.8 zetabytes a year by 2022. The number of connected devices will be three times the world’s population by the same date. There is a nice chart in the Cisco report: in 19...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs - new

Published 10 September 2019

The World of 12G 4K/UHD Processing

Technology moves fast and when it comes to audio and video broadcasting, there is always room for improvements in audio and video quality and ease of production. One of the main goals of broadcasters and content providers today is to create an immersive experience for the viewers, giving them the feeling of being part of the viewed content. The 4K/...

Submitted by Varun Patel

Published 16 July 2019

State of the Nation - Drama

If you can remember as far back as the 1980s, then you probably remember a Saturday night drama called Hill Street Blues, written and developed by Steven Bochco. Made for NBC in the States, it was widely shown around the world, including in the UK. It was a pioneer ensemble drama, with no star characters but a lot of individuals – the police office...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs - new

Published 21 March 2019

Remote Teams and Talent

If your studio works with non-local creative talent, you already know that there are opportunities and challenges associated with distributed production and post production. Bridging the distance not only allows you to find the best talent for the job anywhere in the world, it creates the potential for a diverse and globally-minded workforce that b...

Submitted by Megan Cater

Published 21 March 2019

State of the Nation

I am writing this in the middle of a record-breaking heatwave in southern England. Yet it is time to be thinking about the mists and mellow fruitfulness of autumn, or at least the predictably damp and chilly Amsterdam when IBC hits town. What will be the hot talking points of IBC this year? I am not in a position to talk about what the big vendors...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs - new

Published 18 July 2018

Twenty Years of Transcription

In 1998 Dom Bourne dropped out of university and started a business providing transcriptions to production companies. The company operated from his childhood bedroom and Dom hoped it would keep him in beer money for a year or two before he decided what he really wanted to do with his life. Twenty years later and, this year, Take 1 celebrates two de...

Submitted by Dom Bourne

Published 18 July 2018

Delivering on the 4k Promise

It’s happened. Consumers are demanding 4K UHD content. They have the TVs, smartphones, tablets and other devices they need, and with much of Netflix and Amazon original content in 4K, as well as sports coverage from BT and Sky, consumers have tasted the future of content quality and are hungry for more. But broadcasters need not worry if their cust...

Submitted by Lorna Garrett

Published 07 June 2018

Transforming asset management and monetization

FremantleMedia is one of the largest global television-production companies in the world — with one of the biggest and most valuable catalogs. We operate in 36 markets, creating, producing, and distributing content across traditional TV and digital platforms at a rate of more than 10,000 hours of programming per year. Besides producing some of the...

Submitted by Chad Hamilton

Published 26 March 2018

Why OTT needs multicast ABR

Last year, Netflix’s global revenue reached $11 billion, with 24 million new names added to its subscribers’ list. Viewers are certainly making their preferences heard – and voting with their remote controls to show that over-the-top (OTT) content is here to stay. However, OTT doesn’t just mean video on demand but extends to live streaming too. Dri...

Submitted by Damien Lucas

Published 26 March 2018