Profile: Steve Warr
pulled from under your feet – possibly through no fault of your own.” Another development at the company has been
the setting up of a current affairs department, producing investigations for Channel 4’s Dispatches as well as video for Microsoft News. Warr and Rudgard have resisted the
temptation to sell up and become part of a bigger group, as many indies have done. “You see those big number deals, but we are happy with Raw Cut continuing to go the way we want it to. We are not beholden to investors, or anybody else for that matter, telling us what to do.” He adds a cautionary note. “If we were part of a bigger group we might have gone under when the recession hit. Instead we continued to invest and thrive.”
PIONEER OF NEW TECHNOLOGY Warr has also been something of a pioneer of new camera technology at Raw Cut. He was the first UK producer to adopt the use of compact, high quality XDCAM HD camcorders such as the EX1 on his shows, and has become an expert in file-based production techniques, touring the
country explaining the benefits of file-based workflows to programme makers. “The significance of cameras such as the EX1 is
that for the first time it has enabled the programmes with budgets at the lower end of the scale to look fabulous,” argues Warr.
“ “We got the first three
EX1’s in the country and were out shooting with them the next day. They are relatively idiot proof, which means that you don’t need to be hugely experienced behind the camera to get reasonable pictures, although clearly the better trained you are the better the pictures you’ll produce.” Now shooting on file-based cameras is second nature for Raw Cut staff, who transfer memory card footage onto RAID 1 protected G-Safe mirrored storage devices for back up on location and editing back at base. But as Warr points out developments in camera technology come thick and fast and each TV project needs to look at camera technology on a case by case basis. “When another commission comes along, it’s important for us not to get stuck in a particular way of working. It would be a mistake to say this is the way we have always worked so we’ll do it again.”
The significance of cameras such as the EX1 is that for the first time it has enabled programmes with budgets at the lower end of the scale to look fabulous
” Winter 2011 theproducer 17
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