Televisual articles from July 2000

Televisual archives from July 2000

Brandt joins the interactive set.(Brandt Animation)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... Design outfit Brandt Animation and interactive TV producer LambieHarper are joining forces to target iTV and the web. Finn Brandt, whose company has specialised in idents and branding for the broadcast and corporate sectors since 1992, says...

Carlton develops indie links.(Carlton International, independent productions)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... Carlton International is investing in a raft of independent productions, after a number of deals agreed by controller of programme development, Mark Gray. Lion TV has won deficit finance for two 60-minute documentaries. The Science of...

Ichoose TV's first production.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... Personalised web TV service IchooseTV.com has teamed up with Victoria Real to co-produce what it claims to be the world's first interactive docusoap for the internet. Cut From the Lounge will document the goings-on at the Soho hair salon...

Pepper's Ghost opens new animation studio.(Pepper's Ghost Productions)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... Pepper's Ghost Productions has set up a new cg animation studio in Kingston-upon-Thames to work on its slate of animation series. "It's a seven-figure investment," says md Paul Michael. "We've got a team of 70 people down there, and we're...

Static.(Signs deal with Canal Satellite)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... Static has signed a deal with Canal Satellite which puts its TV games service, PlayJam, on the French cabsat platform. The deal includes the option to buy a stake in Static, and gives it preferred-supplier status for developing games. It brings...

Ronin Entertainment.(Partners with Brainpool TV)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... Ronin Entertainment, producers of C5s It's A Knockout, has teamed up with German independent, Brainpool TV. The two outfits will develop formats for the international market. Brainpool now owns 20% of Ronin, with further development deals with...

dvtvchannel.com.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... New web channel dvtvchannel.com has gone online, and its founder - documentary-maker Mark Wilkinson is looking for short original shows to webcast. The site has a live 60-minute webcast, Big Mouth, every Thursday at 11 pm, as well as an...

CITV nets kids with Darrall Macqueen's Mouse.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... First commission for new independent production house Darrall Macqueen is Mouse, from CITV. The 5x15-minute live series, presented by Fearne Cotton from Pearson's TV studio, encourages kids to get involved in simultaneous web and TV...

Central and Carlton play You Don't Say.(Central Television Ltd. and Carlton Television Ltd.)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... A new game-show for Central is being produced at Carlton studios by Busman's Holiday producer Mike Morrissey. You Don't Say was commissioned by Central's md Ian Squires in November, after Canton's development unit delivered a rough format....

Eye Animation.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... Eye Animation has produced two spots for Grey Advertising's client, Mars. Promoting its range of Starburst confectionery, Planets is a 20-second journey through a computer-generated solar system of various fruit-shaped planets, all built from...

Artist Co's Yellow for Cold Play.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... Yellow, the latest promo from The Artist Company's directing duo James and Alex, is for the indie band Cold Play and was commissioned by Sony's Faith Holmes. The idea for this promo actually sprang from its lyrics, explains Kate Collier,...

Keyframe Productions.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... The titles for the BBC's adult numeracy show Numbers Direct is the work of Alan Howell, from the Leeds-based graphics outfit, Keyframe Productions. Network Productions Andy Dunderdale commissioned the 30-second sequence, which Howell completed...

Bruce Dunlop & Associates.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... Bruce Dunlop & Associates has produced two commercials for Bulmers beverage, White Lightning. Shot on 35mm, the spots concentrate on the characters of a gang of lads and a separate group of girls preparing for a night out. Both were directed by...

Sand Pictures.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... Bristol corporate producer Sand Pictures has completed a 30-second animation for the Cancer and Leukaemia in Childhood charity. Directed by Daniel Luscombe and drawn by Pete Smith, the spot was animated at A for Animation. It is being shown in...

Thames spins off Burnside.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... Thames TV's The Bill spinoff, Burnside, airs this month on ITV in a Thursday-night post-watershed slot. The series comprises three storylines, told across three two-hour episodes, focusing on the eponymous Bill detecfive played by Chris...

Loose Moose pilots pigs and dinosaurs.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... Ad producer Loose Moose has branched out into longer-form work with two short films. The first, Thunderpig, is a pilot for Nickelodeon US. Directed and animated by Ange Palethorpe, the five-minute film is based on the drawings of Texan...

Line Up Communications.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... Line Up Communications has produced a 10-minute fly-on-the-wall corporate video for the RAG. Commissioned by Annette Allen and produced by Heather Juniper, it was shot on BetaSP over seven day following a patrol van. It will form part of the...

Chrysalis wins UK Play sitcom.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... UK Play's editor Myfanwy Moore has commissioned the channel's first animation, Terrorville, from Chrysalis TV. The 8x30-minute sitcom has various new comedy talent stranded on a surreal and remote island based on Henry Obasi's visuals, all...

Baraka's Aleksander Stiglic.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... Baraka's Aleksander Stiglic created and designed the animated globe in Bloomberg Television's ad for BX1, its new share-dealing software. Commissioned by freelance producer/director Gary Morris, One World was filmed on a 35mm motion-control...

Code Design and Direction.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... Code Design and Direction (formerly M2 Design) has finished its first commission: titles for CBBC's teen lifestyle show, UKool. Designed by Code's Chris Jennings and Aruni Asregadoo, the sequence was hosted at 124 Facilities and composited at...

E&P.
July 1, 2000... E&P creatives Rob Machin, James Roberts and Sophia Deacon are designing ten image campaigns, ten bumpers, ten title sequences and an ad for Channel NewsAsia. The team spent three weeks in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and India capturing Asian...

National obsession for sale.(Premier League highlights)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... Winning sports rights is a game of two halves. After hugely outbidding for the Premier League highlights for the next three years, ITV could be heard trumpeting its early goal against the BBC and obituaries for Match of the Day were hastily...

TV drama.(investments by ITV and BBC)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 2000... TV drama is once again a hotbed, with ITV slinging [pound]20m into it one week (prompted by the ITC) and the BBC countering with [pound]10m the next. Prompted by? Well, the whole BBC review thing, plus Mark Thompson's hints that it's all...

Mel and Grif and Peter (Fincham).
July 1, 2000... But for every mega-indie in the making, another gets snapped up by a bigger fish. Notably Pearson, which last month paid top entertainment producer Talkback [pound]62m to pioneer its "production village" idea. It has to bean age thing, with the...

ITC.
July 1, 2000... Nor should it lead to the expectation that deals they've had for years with rival broadcasters will suddenly revert to the CLT-Ufa fold. So that a "no" to speculation that Pearson/Thames's The Bill will soon be pulled from ITV (or, God forbid,...

It's TV, but is it art?
July 1, 2000... For a man who produced the best arts documentary of the last year (Ian MacMillan's Art Attack) to say he's not "convinced TV is the place for looking seriously at art" (In My View, Televisual June) is ironic to say the least. Especially when...

Digital sounds familiar.
July 1, 2000... I was interested to read your article about the impact of Digital Video Broadcasting on the quality of the sound we'll in future be able to hear from our television sets (Hear No Evil, Televisual June). There's an assumption that, because...

The mountain goes to Mohammed.(IVCA moves to London)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... If you're looking for the corporate producers' association, it's moved. Last month, the IVCA uprooted from the margins of Fitzrovia and Soho and took itself firmly off in the direction of the City - leaving the multi-disciplined production...

Put spots on the spot.(television commercial)(Brief Article)(Interview)
July 1, 2000... The client picks the agency, the agency picks the production company and the producer sorts out the post... Except that these days, with post the star of many an ad, that choice may come further up the food-chain. Rob Buckley asks one...

The future of TV?
July 1, 2000... Personalised VoD promises to revolutionise the film, TV and ad industries (again.), and might even put money in some independents' pockets too. Ed Waller talks to the man buying the content at FutureTV The TV channel is dead, say the...

Brain stories.(production of 'Brain Story')
July 1, 2000... Thanks to GM foods, Martians and mice with human ears on their backs, science programming is booming. But Though BBC Science has recently made several high-rating pop-science shows, none of them raises as many tough philosophical questions as...

Mixed media messages.
July 1, 2000... The year that turned the corner into the 21st century has seen many corporate producers reinvent themselves in new media guises. We report what producers tell us about a year influx, then showcase the best of them With media miscegenating...

Webwatcher.(KPE Interactive to produce interactive programming for Hat Trick)
July 1, 2000... Websites are just the beginning for the internet: coming soon is interactive programming. Rob Buckley talks to the man behind Hat Trick's first "semi-interactive" foray on the web Greg Dyke wants the BBC to make money. The Davies commission...

Mine's two sugars.(Stephen Rudder learns the trade)
July 1, 2000... Getting into television may still boil down to being ready to act as a willing slave, but new training schemes now make sure you're learning while yor're slaving. Belinda Hanks finds out what the independent sector is prepared to put into...

The black queen.(Brook Lapping producing Victoria's Empire)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... As Channel 4 raked in ratings for its documentary on Good Queen Bess, Brook Lapping was deep in production with its own on Good Queen Vic for (among others) Channel 5. Christina Pishiris reports History is bunk, said Henry Ford. But, last...

Frontline and Happy Fish unite.
July 1, 2000... Post-houses Frontline and Happy Fish are to merge. The two will be based in Frontline's Covent Garden offices, following Frontline's acquisition of its premises and neighbouring offices. Happy Fish md Tracy Thomas will be director of sales...

Race for iTV standard begins.(Channel Four Television Company Ltd.)
July 1, 2000... The ITU and SMPTE are about to go head to head in a fight over who sets the standards for global interactive television. The ITU wants to establish a standard for all iTV platforms by the end of November. But SMPTE wants to get its own...

Ozone md Martin Hicks.
July 1, 2000... Ozone md Martin Hicks has left the dry-hire company, taking with him facility manager Corinna Hartwig. Hicks is known to have been working on a new business idea for some months, and "just said he was going into business for himself," says new...

Magmaster staff quit for Moli.(Molinare Ltd.)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... Molinare is finally set to replace its head of audio, with Magmasters' Billy Mahoney, following the defection of Steve Cookman to Tele-Cine last year. And Mahoney is bringing with him his whole team: dubbing mixer Darren McQuade and sound...

DGP embraces Kiss TV spirit for new channel.
July 1, 2000... New channel Kiss TV is set to launch on Sky Digital with a visual identity created by post-house and new media facility, DGP. The company supplied five programme intros and outros, six brand identity graphics and further digital brand...

M2 starts design consultancy.(M2 Entertainment creates Code Design and Direction)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... M2 is repositioning its design department as a new broadcast design consultancy called Code Design and Direction. Headed by M2's creative director, Chris Jennings, the company will be housed within M2. "Code gives our designers and clients...

Streaming competitors do deals.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... The fight to be leader of the streaming formats has taken a new turn as competitors in the field have started doing deals with each other. Real has now licensed both Microsoft's Windows Media Format (WMF) and Apple's QuickTime for its...

Component.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... Component has just finished the titles to Thames's The Bill spin-off, Burnside. Bernard Allum designed the titles, with Chris Lovegrove running motion- control. Head of graphics Simon Pyke did the final composite. Component has also taken on...

Iap Interactive.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... Trouble TV is to get a range of video-capture kiosks from Nick Doff's new company Iap Interactive. The networkable Trouble-Caml will be located in Top Shop and Top Man outlets and will provide broadcast material within hours of use. Footage can...

Jump.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... Jump has taken delivery of a Hal with 5D Masher to help with its design work "We need to be more flexible for our clients," says senior designer Russell Mann. The company will use the system for the whole range of the facility's work, including...

All over for celluloid dream?(decreasing use of film stock)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... As experiments with digital film-making extend to digital distribution with Fox's new sci-fi animated movie, Titan AE, CFC's digital visual effects supervisor ponders the digital future. If film had never existed, wouldn't we still want to...

Bees make honey.(The Hive is graphics/animation spin-off of VTR)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... The latest of VTR'S subsidiaries is a graphics house that doesn't like to restrict itself to any one industry. Rob Buckley puts his head into The Hive to see what the firm's working on Jack of all trades, master of none? That's the kind of...

Baraka.(interstitials designed for Discovery Channel)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... Baraka has completed work on a series of interstitials for Discovery's forthcoming hosted nights of themed programming. Created by Discovery Channel producer Adam Gill and in-house designer Aleksandar Stilgic in Jaleo, they centre on the...

Soho 601.(appointments of Andy Brown and Matt Adams)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... Andy Brown has joined Soho 601 as a senior Inferno artist. Previously at Complete, Brown has also worked at The Mill. He'll be working on Soho 601's new Inferno, running on an Onyx 2. Meanwhile, senior post-producer Matt Adams has joined the...

Laughing Buddha.(editing work)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... Laughing Buddha is finishing work on Shaker Maker, a Princess Productions lifestyle show for the BBC about cocktail maker Ben Reed, made in the style of Naked Chef. It was edited in an Avid MC1000 by Justin Annandale. The company is expecting...

KIT SPEC.(production equipment at The Hive)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... There are 15 animators at The Hive, working on NT, SGI and Mac platforms. The company has seven Maya seats (two on NT), nine Lightwave seats and two Softimage 3D seats upgrades to XSI are "coming soon." The Hive is also working on a...

Cg animators mesh for C4.(computer graphics animators compete in film contest sponsored by Channel 4)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... The first-ever cg animation scheme Mesh opens to applicants from across the UK, courtesy of Glasgow independent Blackwatch and Channel 4. Blackwatch producer Nicola Black sends out a call for entries Digital animation is one of the most...