Pro video blog…Produced by Philip Johnston DoP/Editor

Our local independent television station “STV” are producing daily Euro 2012 inserts for their internet feed, when you look at their premises at the Clydeside in Glasgow, surely they must be producing some fancy programming, think again.

Their title sequence is nothing to write home about when you consider they are using a full time graphic artist to produce this and our graphics produced in Motion 5 is far better and more punchy.

This is the sum of STVs creativity these days everything is filmed out the back of the building just to prove it if proof were needed I was involved with this insert with Lorraine Kelly back in 2009…same old background inside STV.

Our chroma key produced with FCP-10 is also shot on a Canon C300 at 720 50p and output on HD…STV can’t produce HD material in fact they are still using DVC-PRO…how sad. STV do use 3 cameras on this… 2 mid shots and a wide shot but the football strips and flags hung all over the place looks tacky and very distracting.

The final comparison says it all, this is the same person being interviewed using Skype, I made Andrew stand in a position that we could see him, STV could not be bothered and it shows, we made a VR video wall feature, STV….? Skype is very iffy at the best of times, Andrew Gibney has a decent setup its all about lighting, the better someone is lit the better your Skype interview will look. Before you ask our Euro 2012 progs are filmed in about 30 minutes and edited the same evening for a next day lunchtime deadline the biggest bottleneck is uploading HD footage to Vimeo (2 hours for a 10m program 720p)

STV need to have a hard look at themselves and decide whether they are going to enter the 21st century by going HD and bring back some enthusiasm and creativity. It’s shocking that two of us at Small Video Sport can produce a far better product with a studio the size of a broom cupboard on HD and ZERO budget.

Scott who runs TheFootyBlog.Net never intended to compete with STV as his passion is football so it was the final straw when this was presented to me with STV Skyping the same person, Andrew Gibney, as we did last week.

The difference is that I am passionate about my job even when I am not being paid for filming and editing it has to be spot on. I used to freelance for STV and it was a sad place to work as everyone feared for their jobs and people took golden handshakes by the dozen to get out the place its no longer the thriving wonderful production station it once was and it’s a sad day when two of us can “out produce” a once revered giant in Scottish Television.

As they say in all good news programs “And Finally” I am proud of my son Scott for trying to make his blog different by using video inserts and coming up with this Euro 2012 format, the internet is a wonderful window on the world.

author

Having been working in the video business since 1988 I have amassed a great amount of knowledge of both the kit and production values over the last 30 years.

5 thoughts on “Small Video Sport v Scottish Television “You decide”

  1. STV’s HD technology is far more advanced than ITV they held back to utilize the latest technology. As for HD both Vet School and the last series of Taggart were filmed in HD. And now STV’s HD channel is getting a huge upgrade as I speak.

  2. I think this is typical of STV. Scotland is hardly a small place and deserves a decent TV station with decent programs. STV fail to provide a lot of the time and sometimes I think we would be better off with the network feed! I thought your programs looked good and you could tell time and effort had gone into them.

  3. Taggart now if I remember that was a golden nugget production…dropped by ITV over a year ago plus one other production…the vet school, not a vast history in HD production. I was with STV when they chose their cheap SD non linear news ingest so I won’t hold my breath !

  4. Saying they are more advanced than ITV is a bit like saying I can cook a steak better than Gordon Ramsey! There is no proof on this other than the fact that ITV have a few HD channels while STV are still waiting to provide theirs to the sky format. Have they gone down the cheap routes again?

    How much of this HD channel will be ITV/foreign HD content & how much will be original STV content?

    Two shows that haven’t been seen in close on two years isn’t great evidence of advancements, is it?

    I would welcome the station to step up but they can’t even seem to do it online with basic editing skills and using skype!

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