In Broadcast - March 2012 - 30

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 6 - MARCH 2012

InMEDIA
NEP Visions Adds To HD Fleet
NEP Visions latest High Deﬁnition scanner addition makes it a brace of a dozen HD-capable trucks…
Towards the end of 2011, in what was supposed to be a quiet year for the outside broadcast industry, NEP Visions launched another new High Deﬁnition scanner, taking their current number of HD-capable ﬂeet to 12 units. This will be 13 by the end of 2012. Due to increased demand from clients, NEP Visions needed another truck and therefore NEP1 was built in-house and put on the road in September, straight onto the Royal National Theatre live show, One Man, Two Guvnors. NEP1 is a single expanding truck that can also be used nonexpanded for tight spaces in towns or cities, yet it is powerful enough to take up to 20 cameras. With this in mind, it can cover bigger sports or music events that previously may have needed a double expanding unit. One of the main considerations when building NEP1 was to make sure it was future proofed and set up for both tapeless workﬂow, 5.1 audio and for 3G. Since its launch, it has successfully covered Football First matches for Sky Sports, the National Theatre Live shows from the South Bank in London, it has visited Gordon Ramsay’s kitchen on Christmas Day and ﬁlmed Eggheads for BBC Scotland. But perhaps one of its more unusual sojourns was when it crossed the English Channel in January. A couple of weeks ago it was Fashion Week in Paris and NEP Visions were there on January 24 to ﬁlm an exclusive concert for Vice Media and their associated website, www.noisey.com. It’s not unusual for an outside broadcast to take place in Paris, but the concert took place on the ﬁrst ﬂoor of the Eiﬀel Tower, 58 metres above the French capital city, making it a challenging and complicated show for all involved. Rigging the cable from the ground to the Gustave Eiﬀel Hall on the ﬁrst ﬂoor was the ﬁrst task. The weather was far from ideal, low cloud and constant drizzle with the temperature below zero degrees for most of the day, but that’s outside broadcasts. In all 200m of cable was required for the six HD cameras placed around the venue. This most certainly was not a job if you didn’t like lifts or heights, or both. At one stage one of the two service lifts that were required for ferrying production crew and kit up and down got stuck, luckily with nobody in it. Visions had previously worked with Vice Media in London in December where they installed a small HD ﬂypack into a very nontraditional ﬁlming venue, Rowans Bowling Alley in Finsbury Park. The band, The Rapture, were webcasting from the venue live and with very little room for parking an uplink, sound and OB truck at the venue, Visions suggested putting a ﬂypack gallery into the adjoining room to where the gig was taking place. The show was very successful and Vice, despite having the option to hire a local French outside broadcast ﬁrm, asked NEP Visions to go to Paris with them. Steven Belser, Head of Production at Vice in the United States commented: “After a successful production in London, I was conﬁdent in NEP Vision’s ability to execute what had become an

The NEP desk tower

increasingly challenging production. We worked together to deﬁne the best approach, and ultimately what transpired surpassed everyone’s expectations”. Vice have gone on to work with part of Visions parent company, NEP Supershooters, in America on a couple more live music shows in California. Going forward into 2012, NEP Visions are building another new unit, the ﬁrst of its kind built in the UK. This will be a 1080 50P truck and is due for completion this summer. Featuring a 3G router and vision mixer, this new truck is being designed to use 3G digital triax cameras or SMPTE for P1 camera options for 3D. Up to 34 cameras will be used as standard and it will also be compatible with Sony 2500 cameras as and when they are available. ■

The NEP1 OB truck in Paris

CONFORM MEDIA ASSET MANAGEMENT TRANSCODE DIGITAL PLATFORM DELIVERY POST PRODUCTION

In Broadcast - March 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of In Broadcast - March 2012