The U.S. Postal Service’s unofficial motto applies just as much to ENG crews as to mail carriers: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night” will keep these dedicated professionals from their appointed tasks.
For decades, a television studio’s production team has been no further from the action than a cable can comfortably be run.
Formula One has enjoyed decades of being one of the world’s most popular sports, with millions of fans making up a diverse and passionate community of TV viewers. Now it’s being considered the fastest growing sport brand on social media platforms too.
With the advent of log recording and higher resolution, and large-format cameras, DOPs are increasingly entertaining the notion that just about anything can be ‘fixed’ or finished in post.
On the morning of March 9th, Bill Macbeth, Chief Engineer at local Fox affiliate KBSI hit the switch on the station’s Rohde & Schwarz THU9evo liquid-cooled UHF transmitter and, in a video posted on social media, uttered the words: “Transmitter is on, we are making power.” Just like that, they were broadcasting a new NextGen TV (ATSC 3.0) signal over the air to its audience in Southeastern Missouri, Western Kentucky, and Southern Illinois.
As network speeds continue to advance, broadcasters are finding they are no longer restricted to single solutions such as SDI. Instead, new methods of reliably distributing high quality media signals are finding their way into the broadcast infrastructure.
Whether we think of it as virtual production, or just a particularly sophisticated variation on the back projection techniques that have been used for years, direct-view LED video displays have gained a hugely positive reputation in film and television effects work.
Since the smartphone era began in the mid-2000s, there has been an explosion of audience engagement around broadcast of entertainment and sports events. This engagement takes many forms including commenting, giving opinions, voting, consuming complementary content (e.g. short form video), playing along and entering competitions to name a few. Much of this engagement takes place on social media and broadcasters have been keen to look for ways to both reflect this activity into the broadcast itself and as well use social media as a means of distribution for supporting content such as short form clips for marketing and/or commercial purposes.
