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Before pandemics and the downsizing at traditional, broadcast news operations, many news and non-fiction DOPs were already assuming a significant role in post-production. Whereas frame rates, f-stops, and the character of our lenses, once formed the backbone of our expertise and practice, DOPs in the non-theatrical realm increasingly find ourselves in a different kind of ditty bag, as correspondent, writer, director, and ersatz editor – all rolled into a one-person-can-do-anything-and-everything mode.
The Cloud is the future of live TV production.
The familiar “Faster, Higher, Stronger” motto is not just for Olympic athletes but also applies to the common man (and woman): The first black-and-white television sets were considered a sensation until color TV came along, opening a whole new dimension to the viewing audience. In parallel, cinema screens grew ever taller and wider. This went hand in hand with the switch from mono to stereo and a stunning series of dramatic boosts regarding picture quality. While 4K is still in the process of being implemented, more daring early adopters are already grooming their 8K offering.
For a long time, selecting camera gear has been fairly easy. For twenty years, digital cinema cameras have never quite had everything we wanted, and the choice often boiled down to comparing the compromises. That’ll always be true to a degree, but for the last year or two it’s felt like we’re arriving somewhere. We can’t have anything, but we can have more than enough, and those compromises are boiling down to a zero-sum game.
Warning: Live TV production troubleshooting contradictions can trigger cognitive dissonance.
As IP, COTs and IT systems advance through broadcast infrastructures, monitoring continues to play a critical role in the efficient and reliable running of a facility. Combining traditional video and audio monitoring with network and system analysis soon increases in complexity, so what do we need to do to optimize monitoring and provide the most reliable system possible?
Without doubt, virtualization is a key technological evolution focus and it will empower many broadcast and media organizations to work differently, more efficiently and more profitably.
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It’s perhaps a little unfair to blame modern visual effects people for the fact that audiences are becoming a little jaded about green screen. If we’re to conclude that there’s some sort of quality problem with VFX, we’d need to be sure that we were noticing each and every use, so we know how big the sample is. Many of the applications of VFX, in modern movies, are actually comparatively simple fixes or paint-outs of inappropriate details that nobody ever notices – the boom reflected in a window, the anachronistic sign in a period piece. If we’re not aware of these VFX, they can’t really be objectionable, and we have no idea what proportion of VFX are actually a problem.
