Vitec Group companies partner with Ravensbourne College for tech showcase

Vitec Group companies Vinten, Autoscript, Camera Corps and The Camera Store partnered with Ravensbourne college to demonstrate the latest advances in teleprompting, remote camera control and grip technology at The Degree Show, held in London earlier this month. The two-day event gave visitors the opportunity to see live programme production in progress while exploring Ravensbourne’s wide range of courses related to broadcasting, communications and graphics.

“We established and operated a complete television channel throughout the Wednesday 12 June and Thursday 13 June of the show,” explains Michael Colyer, The Degree Show’s Engineering Manager. “Ofcom licenced us to transmit locally in HD MPEG-4 and SD MPEG-2 on two separate Freeview channels. With just two channels on our multiplex, we were able to transmit very high signal quality. All the content was produced by Ravensbourne students working a across various parts of the college building.

“TCS provided three Vinten Heavy Duty tripods and Vector 950 pan and tilt heads. As a headline sponsor of the show, Vinten in turn provided Vector 950, Vector 75, Vector 430 and Vision 250 heads on a range of Quartz, Osprey and Heavy Duty pedestals and tripods. These allowed precise and smooth pan and tilt operation from a wide range of angles. We also used two 15 inch Autoscript LED on-camera prompters with a WinPlus XBox base station and HC-1 optical handle control. These proved very popular with our presenters, were easy to install on a plug-and-play basis and displayed a very logical control routine. The prompters linked straight into our system and, since the feeds were analogue composite, cabling was easy.

“Camera Corps Q-Ball heads gave us some fantastic shots, both in the studio and mounted on a balcony above one of the sets. The students really warmed to the Camera Corps system. Two joystick controllers and a mini joystick panel were installed, operating five remote heads. Remotely controlled cameras clearly have a big future as they greatly extend the range of options available to a production team.”