Thames Valley

Carols from Kings – behind the scenes

The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from Kings College, Cambridge, was first held on Christmas Eve 1918. Its fame grew after the service was heard on radio in 1928 and, with the exception of 1930, it has been broadcast at home and abroad ever since. In 1954 Christmas Carols from Kings was televised on Christmas Day as part of a live exchange of programmes with other countries with Midnight Mass coming from Paris on Christmas Eve and Winter Games from Switzerland on Boxing Day.

PRODUCTION FOCUS: FLIRTY DANCING

Second Star Production’s successful hybrid reality dating show Flirty Dancing has two seasons under its belt; they share their insights and experiences behind this refreshingly new dating show format. Two strangers rehearse a dance separately with members of Diversity, Ashley Banjo’s dance team. The first time they meet is to dance together in a beautiful location, then walk away without speaking. Will they want to meet up again after sharing their emotional dance?

2020 visions: the view from the DPP

Early in the last decade, a tsunami in Japan devastated the factory that supplied HDCAM-SR tapes - the format used to deliver most TV programmes. As people sought an alternative, the uptake of file-based production was accelerated. An informal organisation was formed - called the Digital Production Partnership - that seized on this opportunity to hasten the move to end-to-end digital, by creating a new file-based delivery specification.

And They Say Engineers are Boring!

In 2017, Norman Green, the retired ITV Network's first Head of Technology, was asked at very short notice to give an 'after lunch' talk to a group of retired senior BBC Managers and staff from Engineering and Operations. 
Norman decided to tell them how he got into the 'Fun Factory' that was television and then how, through his career, he had worked with BBC staff on many occasions. This video is an illustrated version of that talk.

Introduced by Paul Mason
Former BBC Chief Technical Coordinator, International Operations

AI in Lockdown: an Indie's Innovation

Factual specialists Arrow International Media addressed the uncertainties of lockdown by convening a virtual task force, from every level of the company, to brainstorm innovative ideas. Their top priority was to consider their assets – over 4,000 hours of rushes and completed series from both the Arrow Media and Arrow Pictures' archives which could be examined and catalogued to create new programmes. The sheer size of the task seemed insurmountable, so their solution was to invest in AI, which could both interpret the images and even identify faces, people and locations.

Production Focus: Portrait Artist of the Week

This is the story of how the flagship Sky Arts show, Portrait Artist of the Year, pivoted to reinvent itself for an audience under lockdown and has created a global live paint-a-long..

Each week a celebrity sits for an invited artist to paint their portrait on a live Facebook stream that now plays to a worldwide audience.  The show is inspirational and  regularly gets over 2,000 submissions from the viewers of their own portraits of the celebrity.

In this YouTube live streamed event, presenter Joan Bakewell and the team behind PAOTW reveal all…

LOCKDOWN TV TECH

Join RTS Fellow and Chairman of the DTG, Simon Fell, in this joint RTS London and Digital Television Group event.  

Simon and his panel of industry experts will discuss the home entertainment technology that’s available to audiences today to make their viewing experience the best it can be under lockdown, and also look at what’s coming next.

They will discuss lockdown TV tech such as Next Gen Audio, voice recognition, 4K, 8K, and much more.

The audience will be able to suggest questions for the panel to address in this live online event.

 

Get your MoJo Working! Mobile Journalism in today’s environment

Mobile Journalism had already created a stir, if not a revolution in the TV journalist community, add to that COVID-19 and challenges of social distancing, and the whole way of working is constantly changing. This rapidly evolving landscape means that people are continually working on what the way forward might be and seeking answers to the new challenges as they arise.