The Max Headroom TV series premiered back in 1987 and was one of the first “Cyberpunk” television shows. The story lines having to do with huge international television / broadcast networks controlling culture and politics were at least 10 or 15 years ahead of their time.
Nobody would argue that mainstream media has a vast influence on these things today!
One of the fascinating things about the fictional “Network 23″, was the idea that all of the camera operators would have continual real time feeds from their portable cameras back to the network. Directors could see the output of any camera at any time, and see their exact location on a map – all in real time.
This type of portable technology was unheard of back in the late 80s, when large satellite uplinks and microwave vans were required to get video back to the station from remote locations.
Fast-forward to 2010, and an update to Sony’s “Location Porter” system looks to be enabling exactly that kind of connectivity, now on a large-scale basis.
Broadcasters have had the capability to use small mobile transmitters and VOIP systems to deliver video for a few years now, but this system takes it up a notch with a turnkey system that enables real time video/audio streaming for up to 12 sources (cameras, remotes, etc) at the same time at the push of a button.
Because it uses high-speed mobile data networks for connectivity, it’s relatively cheap compared with conventional systems. It’s no longer a matter of shooting a story and delivering media back at a later time, but realtime capture right onto a live show, or into an editorial system.
Maybe the future of broadcast news isn’t getting a single camera to an event and trying to cover everything at one, but to get a “swarm” of networked realtime cameras that feed everything and anything back simultaneously.
I need to post a list of things that students in the Television & Video Production program won’t be able to touch from this point forward:
- 3/4″ VTRs
- Black and White Monitors
- Video Typewriters
- Amiga Computers
- Cassette Tapes
- Audio Carts
- …and more
And the reason for the inability to touch this equipment is that we’re getting rid of it all. This is what our hallway looks like right now:
The guys who have to dispose of all of this old analog gear have their work cut out for them.
While some of this equipment has served us well over the years, we’ve been replacing it with networked video servers, new character generators, iMac edit suites, and High-Def Cameras.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been assembling a “yearbook” of sorts, from the behind the scenes production photos I took during our commercial productions this term.
When everyone is back in September I’ll be taking orders if anyone wants a high-quality hardcopy version for themselves.
Summer reno time is here!
First up is a new install for TV Audio 2 to replace the old audio board with something a bit newer, including a new iMac 24″ for playback.
Thanks to all of the students and staff who volunteered their time on Sunday, as BCIT Television & Video Production took our portable production system “on the road” down to Stanley Park to handle video Production for the World Partnership Walk.
World Partnership Walk 2010
Everyone had a great time and we put on a show that the crowd really enjoyed, helping to showcase the events of the day, as well as producing short video vignettes telling “walk stories”.
Thanks to our tapeless production workflow (and some great work from our camerapeople & editors), we were able to turn the segments around and push them directly to the server for playback onto the bigscreen in a matter of minutes
Special thanks to the crew that helped bring the equipment back to the broadcast centre, and spent some time washing the mud off of the tarps and cabling.
Also, special thanks to Tim and Sandro at ProShow Vancouver for helping out with some extra broadcast cabling to make the production run even more smoothly!
