NBCUniversal

When Jeff Shell, 54, kicked off his tenure as Chief Executive of NBC­Universal last month, the avid sports fan was faced with a field of play containing many fast-moving players. This is unlikely to faze the one-time high-school basketball player, who has spent his career out-weaving and out-jumping rivals.

“I want to be in a business that needs fixing or is transitioning,” Shell told the Los Angeles Times when he was Chair of the Universal Filmed Entertainment Group.

The new studio is planned to house the production of multiple TV shows and films simultaneously and will be located in Elstree, close to the home of Star Wars and Strictly Come Dancing, Elstree Studios.

Backed by Sky’s recent new owner Comcast, the new studio will be developed in partnership with sister-company NBCUniversal and Legal & General.

With previous credits as a “computer visual artist” and “surveillance artist” in the likes of Spooks and espionage film Criminal, CCTV director Mark Doman has helped to carve out this recent role in the television landscape.

A CCTV director is responsible for replicating the style of surveillance footage and will shoot high-quality footage from long distances using a combination of GoPros, small cameras, zoom lenses and underwater cameras, which is then compressed to lower resolutions to produce a surveillance aesthetic. 

“That scale allows marketers to reach more people and grow their businesses.

“The need for scale is why we’ve seen so much consolidation across the media industry, including Sky joining Comcast NBCUniversal – and today you can’t achieve new scale without going global.…

“At Comcast NBCUniversal… we put… people at the centre of our strategy; we build scale… towards a shared vision. [This] means doing every part of your business the right way.