TECHNOLOGY SURVEY


SECOND-SCREEN POTENTIAL Only half of our producer respondents (51%)


stated that TV was their primary platform client, with a signifi cant proportion (28%) supplying con- tent for internet/mobile and connected devices. With dominant conversations in this area focusing on multiplatform content (22%) and online video (28%), producers are waking up to their shows’ 360-degree potential.


Marc Goodchild, an interactive consult- ant who has held senior positions in inter active at the BBC, believes most TV companies already have a cross-platform mindset. “The position they’re in now is: how do you implement those ideas?” he says.


Through his consultancy, IpDipSky-


Blue, Goodchild is working across a number of second-screen applications


Broadcast TECH


Q OVER WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING PLATFORMS DO YOU AND/OR YOUR COMPANY DO MOST OF YOUR WORK?


for clients. “At the moment, most second-screen services perform a programme information support role – they cut out all the noise and blend in Google, Twitter and chatroom functions. The real challenge for me is in adding that secondary layer into programming. Stripping off the main screen and making the second screen far more personalised.”


While gameshows and big Saturday night


‘Operators used to know when they’d got their shot. Now there’s a lot of shooting going


on for shooting’s sake’ Cherry Dorrett, Windfall Films Another challenge for producers is that the


budgets handed to them often don’t match the costs of the broadcaster’s camera spec and workfl ow requirements. “If money was no object, we’d all be hiring


in DoPs and getting them to shoot on Red or any of the big cameras, but the bulk of reality and factual is more likely to be shot on a high-quality, low-cost SLR by an AP,” says Windfall Films line producer Cherry Dorrett. Dorrett and Windfall production manager


Eva Johnsson say the combination of fi le- based cameras and self-shooters has led to increasingly complex workfl ow requirements. “Operators used to know when they’d got their shot. Now there’s a lot of shooting going on for shooting’s sake – or shooting to cover themselves because they’re not trained cam- era operators. And all this footage still has to be logged,” says Dorrett. According to Johnsson, however, produc- tion managers are getting tougher. “We’re


16 | Broadcast TECH | July/August 2012


starting to say, ‘You have to get your shot because we’re not going to digitise material that we’re never going to use’,” she says. “APs and directors also know that they have to back up all their material twice and label fi les clearly – it’s more admin for them at the end of a day’s shooting, but it has to be done.” On Windfall’s bigger projects, such as


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Foxes Live, thinking creatively about staff hires helped them deal with the large vol- umes of footage – with clusters of tech- nology-savvy zoology graduates hired to log and ingest sequences of footage demon- strating interesting animal behaviour.


entertainment vehicles are obvious targets, Good- child thinks there is potential in other genres. “Take a show like Sherlock [pictured]. There are literally scenes inside Sherlock’s mind on the main screen – it’s core to the show – so for a second-screen app, you could be thinking about get- ting inside the brain of the character; getting more of an analytical view.”


40 or less 51-55


41-45 56-60


46-50 60+


1% 9%


8% 51% 28% 3%


■ TV ■ Internet/mobile/connected devices ■ Cinema ■ Blu ray/DVD ■ VoD ■ Radio


PRODUCERS TOP FIVE TECHNOLOGY CONSIDERATIONS CONSIDERATION


%


1 Technology that gives us the best return on investment


2 Technology that makes us most efficient


3 Technology that improves our workflow


4 Technology that can be incorporated into our current set-up


5 Technology that is the cheapest available


27 21 10 8 7


Q IF YOU WORK IN VOD, WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING MAKES UP THE BIGGEST PART OF YOUR BUSINESS?


9% 10%


Creative benefi ts Our survey indicates that the top two rea- sons for buying or hiring kit are return on investment (27%) and improving effi ciency (21%). Other reasons – trying to sell the creative benefi ts of new technology, or new ways of working – tend to be a harder sell. Bos says: “It’s a challenge to demonstrate


companies that said 4K was important


to people higher up the food chain the actual value of a technology if the benefi ts aren’t tan- gible – if it’s not time or money but just a gut instinct that we should be trying things out. “The sooner we roll up our sleeves and try out key technologies, the sooner we’ll be able


Production 61% 30%


■ File-to-live ■ File-to-file ■ Live-to-live


to discover what the creative benefi ts are. But putting a business case together for this, as well as doing your day job, can take time.” Harrison reveals that the DPP has just commissioned a third report into fi le-based workfl ows focusing purely on the creative benefi ts. “It’s something that perhaps has not been promoted in the past and needs to be explored,” he says.


www.broadcastnow.co.uk/techfacils


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