In Broadcast - June 2013 - 60

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

N E W S

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 20 - JUNE 2013

InVIEW

Bradley Engineering Focuses On
Dynamic Remote Camera Control
Both large and small companies need to be more dynamic and more forward thinking than ever before,
but Bradley Engineering have found their niche…
By David Bradley
Managing Director,
Bradley Engineering

y Grandmother always sent the
birthday and Christmas cards
in our family. I only ever received
one letter from my Grandfather.
Inside the envelope was a single
cutting from a newspaper. It was
an advertisement from the BBC
inviting people to apply for technical
operators roles. And so my career
in television began – on an ‘A59’
course at Wood Norton in 1978.
I spent my first few years at
Television Centre working on
programmes like Hi de Hi, Blake’s
7, Swap Shop and the very ﬁrst
Newsnight. Then on to BBC Outside
Broadcasts for endless horse racing,
Royal Variety Shows, Wimbledon
and Cup Finals.
One day, whilst working on a show
with Samantha Fox we had to use a
new-fangled invention, a BetaCam,
to get shots on a fairground ride.
Paul McNeal made the mount and
the shots were great – never before
seen on TV – never before possible.
It was however the perceived
wisdom that these “CamCorders”
would never catch on, so I bought
one. It cost more than my house at
the time, nearly £30,000 with just
four NP1 batteries and a 9 x 14 lens.
Off I launched (blindly) into the
freelance world. I couldn’t afford a
tripod, or lights, so I would hire these
from Martin Mathewson who had an
Ikegami HL78 and BVP110 kit at the
time. It meant very early starts and
late ﬁnishes for a one day shoot as
I had to collect the tripod before the
shoot and return it afterwards. But I

Testing the Gyro236 - Bradley Style

was young and it was exciting. By
the way, for those who don’t know,
‘HL’ stood for ‘Handy Looky!’
I gradually developed some
regular clients, a few spring to mind;
Creative Television, JD Associates
and Open Mind Productions. Open
Mind are still around and specialised
then and now in childrens’
programmes. One programme won
a Royal Television Society award for
technical innovation and another
won a Bafta – great for my CV!
About this time Sony launched
a new camcorder – the VX1000. It
used Mini DV tapes and produced
pictures nearly as good as my
Ikegami HLV55 BetaSP camera.
Suddenly, anyone could afford a
camera and set up as a cameraman.
Again, the writing was large on the
wall and I decided that remote
cameras were the way forward.
In retrospect this may have been
slightly premature.
I had already been toying with
remote systems in my shed.
Expanding my rudimentary
knowledge of electronics and
mechanics to a point where I
developed my ﬁrst little remote head
speciﬁcally for the revolutionary
Toshiba TU48 remote head camera.
Michael Cain (the cameraman) was
one of my ﬁrst customers for in-car
cameras on Top Gear.
I then met Steffan Hewitt of
Polecam who invited me to join
him on his stand at IBC. I think that
was in 1999. We had a tiny booth
round the side of Hall 10. The

The Bradley Gyro350 on SkyTrac at Cheltenham last year

buzz from the show was amazing.
One of the things I demonstrated
was a gyro controlled version of
my little remote head. It was very
simple, and analogue, but showed
potential. Now we produce several
products utilising this technology,
originally developed in little more
than a garden shed!
I also met Stuart Bush who I
had missed at the BBC. He was
always, and still is, having stuff
built that just doesn’t quite exist
yet. Tracks, remote heads, widgets
etc. Our latest collaboration is a
new, Versatile jib head which we
launched at NAB in April. Whilst
building stuff for Stuart I realised
I would have to ‘go digital’. Andy
Peakin (AKA Ginge) recommended
a book on digital electronics which
I read and re-read until I understood
enough to start building digital stuff.
Of course this led straight into
needing to learn how to program
microcontrollers – another sharp
learning curve! However there’s
nothing like needing food and a
roof to motivate learning and doing
what’s necessary.
I think it was Martin Mathewson
who told me that television is a
fashion industry. Any doubt that this
was true has been allayed by years
of experience. Recent years have
given us 3D, now multi-rotor remote
helicopters and soon 4K or whatever
else captures the imagination for the
immediate spotlight.
In just a few years we have seen
a 180 degree shift from demand
driving technology to technology
driving demand. This is now true
in professional television as much
as in consumer electronics. Larger

companies tend to be the demand
drivers whilst smaller (and more
agile) companies, like us, tend to
keep an eye on technology and dart
into a gap, either overlooked or not
big enough for the larger companies
to be interested. Sometimes we may
even develop something really new
as we see an application using the
latest available technology, married
to technology developed ourselves
(for instance; our low latency, multi
standard, HDSDI output).
This difference between large and
small companies ensures there is
room in the market for both, but both
need to be far more dynamic and
forward thinking than they needed
to be just a few years ago. Gone are
the days of a single product selling
for years without upgrades or effort.
From my garden shed, to a
purpose-built shed, and now - a
chicken shed – fully converted into
a factory. Multiple CNC machines,
production area, development
area, ofﬁces and conference room,
but you can see a trend here! Our
in-house capabilities encompass
mechanical design and production,
electronic design and production,
writing the software, and ﬁnally,
producing the finished product.
Proud to be still fully independent
and proud to be able to stamp:
‘Made in the UK’ on our products.
We’ve had many successes
and many failures – the object
is to make sure the successes
outweigh the failures, by the largest
margin possible.
We don’t really like to use the term
‘failure’ – in the words of Thomas
Edison, “I’ve not failed. I’ve just
found 10,000 ways it won’t work”.

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In Broadcast - June 2013

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