MARCH 2016
Vol 222
MTP Conference 2016 The second ever Media Technology Pacific Conference went over 2 days in Auckland at the beginning of March this year and, following the first conference in 2014, was another great success. The numbers were slightly down, but there was certainly a wide selection of people from right across the industry; the broadcasters, the telcos and lots of other interested groups, wanting to know and share ideas and views as to how the industry was going and to see the changes that had occurred since the last conference – and there were a considerable number. The key sponsor of this, and the previous MTP conference, is Gencom and to fill in some detail we have their GM, David Barnard. David: Gencom has been one of a number of sponsors of this show since the beginning. We’ve helped put it together and we’re very excited about it. We’ve got a booth here which is a nice opportunity to show off some of our product relevant to this conference’s theme, but really for us, it’s about getting together with customers, suppliers and others in the industry – getting everybody together and talking. We know that there are a lot of big changes happening in our industry – there’s no big secret there. In my view, the most important thing is for everybody to get together and understand how we’re all facing these challenges; what are the issues we’re having; how do we address them and help people connect the dots between what has been and what is coming. It’s a very interesting time and I think that in this market – not just Auckland, not just New Zealand, but in the region, it’s really good to have a forum like this for people to come together to hear the latest thinking in the industry; to learn how various companies around the world are addressing these challenges; and to then bring that information to bear on their own challenges. Ed: What does impress me, and this is something I think is a New Zealand and probably an Australian thing
David Barnard, Amery Carriere and Gerry Smith.
too, is the collaboration. This is not a Gencom show. There are not great big Gencom signs all over the place to say “rah rah, this is Gencom.” You’ve been very inclusive and shared the event with a whole lot of other companies so that everyone has a chance in here and you’re very open about it?
David: Yes – to be fair, you’re right it’s not a Gencom show and it was never conceived as a Gencom show. Gencom has been involved with it from the beginning … Ed: Well because you’ve got lots of product that goes into the space and, really, you are supplying New Zealand with broadcast and digital services, so you’re an obvious player, but you’re still being very open in allowing anyone to come in and have a part in this? David: We feel that in order for the show to be successful, it’s very important that we’ve got a mix of vendors, a mix of participants, a mix of speakers and that’s much bigger than just Gencom. Obviously this market is very important to us, it’s our core market. To really develop it, we need shows like this to succeed; and that means making it an industry initiative, not just one party’s initiative. Ed: You’ve done so well which I am sure is at least partly attributable to having Gerry Smith in charge of everything?
David: Yes, Gerry’s fantastic. He’s done a great job of bringing together some really interesting speakers over a broad range. Today we’re hearing a lot about the distribution side of the business, but we’ve also got Avid, we’ve got Object Matrix, we’ve got some other guys giving a different perspective on various parts of the supply chain. Gerry’s been really good at that, and he’s really good as a moderator at identifying the core items of interest and asking good questions and making it a discussion, an open forum. Ed: So for people who didn’t attend this year’s one and find the synopsis that I’m going to provide in my pages too brief, what can they do further, apart from signing up to the next one in 2 years’ time. Is there any way they can get further information on any of the products or services discussed here? David: Yes. First of all, with regard to the show, you can visit the website for the show which is www.mediatechevents.com and there’ll be lots of information, pictures, stories, all of that. As far as learning more about the products and the sponsors –
Go to https://sites.google.com/site/nzvideonews/ for more news. P4
Our Minister speaks.
P7
The Presenters.
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for Gencom’s products you can come talk to us, or you can come to our website at www.gencom.com Also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin as we’re now using social media to communicate industry news and product announcements. And if you want to hear from any of the other sponsors or any of the other speakers that were here, just send me a line and I’ll be happy to put you in touch. Again, it was an event for the industry, put on by members of the industry and the value of it was demonstrated by the presence of the Broadcasting Minister, the Honourable Amy Adams, who gave the opening address. NB: I have shortened and changed a few insignificant words so this is not a verbatim transcription. Ed Good morning It’s a pleasure to be here this morning to present the opening address at the 2nd Media Technology Pacific conference representing both my Communications and Broadcasting portfolios. It’s no accident that I hold both those roles.
years, some businesses have gone from being seen by some as in far too dominant a position in the market, to now urgently looking at how they compete. So what’s the role and the responsibility of Government in this period of intense change? Well in my view, it’s not to dictate how these shock waves should play out, nor to try and preserve existing business models. What I think we must do is firstly make sure our regulatory settings are not unintentionally constraining how markets evolve. Where possible, we should seek to deliver a level playing field between competitors. Secondly, we need to ensure consumers’ interests continue to be protected in a way that reflects how they are actually behaving, not based on models of how they used to behave. New Zealand’s regulatory and policy framework in this area has served us well for many years, but because of the dramatic shifts in the broadcasting and communications landscape, it is now showing signs of being outdated and out of step with today’s realities. In 2015-16, Government will invest more than $200 million in the public broadcasting sector and, of course, we are in the middle of investing more than $2 billion in high speed communications infrastructure up and down the country. These are not small sums of money. In this era of fiscal constraint, we’ve maintained this funding because we understand the critical importance of the digital economy for New Zealand and because we back New Zealand-made content and recognise the value that publicly funded broadcasting plays in our communities. We want New Zealanders to be able to receive and view content that is relevant and interesting to them when they want, and on the platform of their choice, while at the same time reflecting the Kiwi identity.
After serving as Communications and IT Minister for three years during our previous term, it had become clear to me that the space between these areas was shrinking so quickly that to deal with one without the other risked missing the realities of what was occurring in the real world. In days gone by, of course, broadcasting sat as a distinct area with a dominant, and seemingly impenetrable, role in how we receive our information and entertainment. But in this modern age, as we experience the digital revolution, things are changing. In fact, digital disruption means that everything is changing. Specifically for our purposes, the nature of how we communicate, conduct business and access information and entertainment is shifting rapidly. Digital disruption in media and communications takes many forms but the area I want to focus on is that of market convergence. Near ubiquitous access to high speed, and increasingly cheap broadband has enabled digital communication platforms like websites, blogs and social media to transform the way we learn, do business, socialise and consume content, but this certainly won’t be news to any of you here. The days when telephones, televisions and radios all had separate functions are well in the past. Businesses now face competition from not only new players, but from whole new sectors. In just a few
What are the challenges? Our Broadcasting act came into effect in 1989. The idea that in 2016 we would use this thing called the internet to stream and download news, movies and TV shows in high definition from anywhere around the world, or run video conferencing from mobile phones, was unimaginable – and because of this, it was not reflected in the policy of the day. This misalignment of policy with market and technological realities in 2016 poses several risks. At the moment, individual platforms are treated differently in the eyes of legislation. We regulate based on the method of transmission. Restrictions which apply to television and radio under the Broadcasting Act do not apply to online platforms, even if they are delivering exactly the same content. Classification regimes and advertising restrictions, for example, can be entirely different for exactly the same content, accessed at the same time, by the same people, simply because of the technology they use to access it. Even our election rules apply differently to print, broadcasting and the online space. It is increasingly hard to see how these discrepancies make sense in 2016 and we need to question the ongoing relevance in each case. The legislation around the use of radio spectrum also warrants further examination. We need clearer ways to manage the process of spectrum acquisition and ongoing compliance.
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And in the telco world, convergence is raising issues of how we regulate companies with effective monopoly positions in a world where the copper line to your home is now being challenged by fibre and high speed fixed wireless and cellular options. How do we ensure a climate that continues to encourage investment and provides business certainty, while still ensuring consumers get the best prices and service possible at a time when data hungry consumers are demanding more and more from networks that still face very high capital expenditure, but may deliver increasingly reduced marginal returns. Finally, as Government, we’re thinking about what regulation means in a world that is increasingly borderless. This is where our domestic businesses face their biggest competition from offshore providers in a greater way than ever before and yet those competitors operate under different regulatory systems and cost structures. But for all that, we can focus on the challenges and the fact remains that convergence brings with it many opportunities. As well as facing competition from offshore, our local providers are increasingly able to compete on a global scale, and New Zealand consumers can take advantage of lower prices and a much wider range of content and services. Yet in order to ensure that businesses and consumers are fully able to realise these benefits, our legislation and policy need to be fit for purpose, flexible and, most importantly in such a fast-moving area, durable. In the digitally converging world, the Government’s long -term vision is to have high quality and affordable communications services and media content available to New Zealanders in ways that meet their needs – enabling our economy to thrive and compete in a dynamic global environment. Content regulation As I mentioned earlier, the merging of previously distinct industries which characterises convergence, can generate all sorts of thorny situations. In the realm of media content, there is currently a lack of clarity around the classification of content and rules around election programmes. For example, there is the question of how on-demand, online content should be classified. Current classification and standards legislation came into effect over 20 years ago so it’s inevitable there would come a time when the current regime would need updating.
There needs to be a clear set of rules and a comprehensive framework on delivery of content. The sector’s regulatory system needs to be flexible and fair to enable it to cope with future change and it should focus on the content, not the way in which it is provided. Based on the feedback received on our convergence discussion documents, there is clearly agreement that some sort of regulatory change is needed. Overall, there is support for amendments to current legislation to address gaps created by convergence. Through submissions, there was a clear message from the sector for consistency in the regulation of content. At the same time, we will need to maintain a balance between respecting the principles of freedom of expression and acknowledging issues of fairness, security and privacy. Among possible ways of supporting desired local content, New Zealand focuses on contestable funding, owning and mandating public broadcasters, and providing spectrum and funding for regional and community broadcasting. Concluding remarks So overall, it’s an exciting time to be involved in the communications and broadcasting sectors. The old rules no longer apply and we have access to tools and services that can be of huge benefit in connecting our small, faraway country to the rest of the world but that will also challenge almost everything we thought we knew about content creation and delivery across Government and the private sector. In order to get the most out of these developments, we need to ensure that we’re well equipped to deal with the challenges that are arising, as well as those which are yet to arise.
We need policy and regulation that is technologyneutral and doesn’t constrain innovation or consumer choice.
We need to ensure the safety and privacy of all New Zealanders in the online space and have confidence in the networks and platforms available to us.
Convergence means different things to businesses, consumers and policy-makers but ultimately it will be consumers that decide how the future looks and we need to be ready to respond. So thank you for those of you here who gave your considered feedback and recommendations to the various consultation processes we have underway. Now, over to the speakers.
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Next Generation TV Consultant.
Google will allow you to sort what you want to appear, but maintain data control.
Mike McMahon. Mike spoke about curating across multiple OTT walled gardens. Now OTT of course is “over the top” and a “walled garden” is a package of media from one supplier. For example, Netflix will do a deal with a large studio and their movies only appear on Netflix, so if you want to see those movies, you have to sign up to Netflix; however, you’ve also got Sky, Lightbox, Neon, Quickflix and other platforms and if you want to see the whole range of movies and shows, then you’ve got to sign up to more than one of them. Hence the concept of the “walled garden.” Mike works for a company called Ashabash Consulting and he gave the example of how he sees the industry going in terms of delivery by giving some instances of the world’s current biggest companies and one is Uber Transport – that they have no vehicles of their own. And you have Ali Baba in China – well they don’t hold any stock of their own. You have Airbnb from Europe – they don’t own any beds of their own. So this is perhaps a model of how he sees the entertainment industry going – something similar to that, but you have an aggregator, somebody who puts a whole lot of things together and doesn’t actually own any themselves. Mike talked about the SVOD ( Subscription Video on Demand ) explosion in New Zealand with many platform incompatibilities between the offers that we have; that some of them might be walled gardens, but there is a lot of overlap of content which, again, causes subscribers unhappiness. He spoke about live sports being very different from on demand – 4K, brand new series where incumbents in the industry still have the edge, because they’ve got the money to buy this new material. Another area where customers can become unhappy is when providers play ping pong with rights, so at one particular time you might be able to watch Orange is the New Black on Netflix, but then suddenly Lightbox buys the rights to it and the next series doesn’t appear on Netflix, but appears on Lightbox or vice versa. So the customers don’t know from time to time where the content they used to watch has moved to. Do they need to change providers? And in fact, this means that television viewing is becoming more difficult. One example of how the industry is trying to create united value to customers is by big players going direct. HBO and Showtime are now going direct to the consumer.
This is leading to customer confusion. What may be necessary is a new type of aggregator who is not philosophically different from the current broadcaster. “What would it look like?” For the consumer, it would mean one bill, one place to change subscriptions when you add your credit card details, and if your credit card changes or is lost and is replaced, you only have one place to go to make all of those changes. The topic of set top boxes came up and that is another example of a walled garden, but with the quality of broadcast and the choice of immediate or delayed viewing. When you get into 4K, this is available at 16 megabit per second from some offers, but this can always reduce while you’re watching it. The question of sustainable throughput in an OTT situation is still being worked on. I spoke with Mike McMahon after his presentation. Ed: Mike, you talked about a “walled garden” and it seemed as though this was a bad thing for consumers, but then you talked about “aggregation” and how it’s a good thing for consumers to have all their products in one place. I was just confused as to the difference between aggregation being good and a walled garden being bad? Mike: To me, a walled garden is a collection of content under one subscription model or entitlement as a commercial model, and I think that’s a good thing. You need to put content into one place and provide a value proposition to people that they can understand “you pay this, you get access to this.” So that makes sense. My point about walled gardens not being ideal is because no one walled garden has everything. Individual entertainment needs are quite varied, so you’re likely going to need access to more than one service or more than one walled garden to satisfy your overall entertainment ambitions as a consumer. Ed:
But then you’ve got a whole lot of overlap?
Mike: Then you’ve got overlap of duplicative content in some of them and differentiated content hopefully as well, and you’ve got to figure out a way … that’s what I mean by breaking down the walled gardens is more the subscription – brokering, aggregating the subscriptions and curating and managing a kind of global user experience would be the way to provide an end user the ability to understand it all. Ed: But then, as you say, you get a myriad of apps and icons on your screen and suddenly it becomes far too hard for grandma to actually find what she wants to look at? Mike: I think it is confusing and I think it’s hard to remember where everything is and even people in this industry don’t truly understand who’s got which licence and when it’s going to expire … Ed:
And for which episode series?
What has developed in some offers is a myriad of apps that customers are finding difficult to control.
Mike: It makes it really hard to be entertained, but to have a facility that was your guide around all of that, that recognised the walled gardens exist, but allows you to kind of traverse seamlessly and understand what was where …
Some of the bigger players, such as Google, are looking to overlook everything and control the myriad of apps – for example, a fully loaded Hulu may have hundreds of icons, each requiring registration.
Ed: Sort of like an overall walled garden that incorporates lots of little ones, but you don’t necessarily have to pay for all of the content in all of the walled gardens?
Mike gave an example of Skinny who took off in the market when they added live sport to their offer.
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Mike:
Yes, that’s my thinking – that make sense?
Ed: Yes it makes sense, but then, you’re almost getting down to the stage of paying a subscription for an individual programme that you watch – maybe it’s 5¢ if you want to watch 30 minutes of The Big Bang Theory for example … you pay per view? Mike: You can – people say TVOD or transactional VOD means “pay as you go” kind of whether it’s rent a movie for 24 hours, or purchase a movie to have the lifelong access to it, or buy an individual episode or buy Season 2 of something; you can transact “one off” like that and have rights to it. Non-subscription oriented models give you a recurring monthly bill in return for ongoing access to a licensed catalogue. Ed: So this is where you see the traditional broadcasters coming back into the play – that they can provide this overall service? Mike: I think there’s a variety of people who can provide that from current pay TV operators, to broadcasters to an upstart that doesn’t exist yet, to people like Apple or Google that are trying to do this now and have ecosystems and devices around it. So I think there’s a variety of people who are circling around this kind of notion, but nobody’s really nailed it yet. Ed: One of the questions that came from the floor was about 4K and how people are looking at that coming, but still we’re in this situation that you might be getting it at 16 megabit per second, you’re watching it in 4K, but suddenly other people on the network are sucking the data out and it drops down. So you’re always going to get this OTT varying level of service with any of these products and that’s where I would think, in New Zealand for example, Sky with a broadcast set top box that is its own walled garden, is providing that high quality delivery that is not interfered with by other people using just Clouds? Mike: Yes, with traditional pay TV, whether it’s satellite delivered or cable TV with QAM, you get into what they call “constant bit rate” so you have a guaranteed playback quality based on that; streaming video over the top is adapted bit rate, so it will fluctuate based on the available capacity at any given moment. It’s more cost effective to deliver content that way, it’s more internet like in nature. You talk about fluctuation from say SD to HD or HD to 4K and back and forth throughout playback, that’s a deliberate function of the technology to create a smooth playback experience that adjusts to the network or the congestion as it were. If you get into a world where you’re able to sustain reliably something north of what you need, you would presumably get a pretty high quality playback, right? So you talk about a 16 megabit per second for a 4K experience – if you’re getting 30 or 50 into your home, you’re going to be able to support one or even multiple streams like that. Ed: But in this New Zealand situation, unless you are on fibre, that’s not happening. Mike: I’m all for fibre, I don’t have it at my house because it’s not available. I’ll be the first to sign up … Ed: So is this quality issue a major concern in New Zealand or is it a different audience that really doesn’t care if it’s low res at some times? Mike: Look 4K … Ed: No, not necessarily 4K, but even delivering high definition content in an OTT service sometimes doesn’t deliver? Mike: The kind of lower echelons of HD, meaning the lower bit rate pro files around, say, a 720 offering, you know it’s not that much. I mean if you get into modern compression and stuff which is different than
what’s used on traditional broadcast technology – you know you get 1.5, certainly 2 megabit per second, you’re into pretty high quality video and that’s not that much bandwidth. As it relates to 4K, it’s not really relevant unless you actually have a 4K TV and the content was produced in 4K in the first place. So it’s a subset of both content and footprint that are even applicable right now. mike@mikemcmahon.org
Brightcove. Mark Stanton. This version has not been proofed by the speaker. Ed.
Mark talked about the digital video trends for 2016, providing an insight into key trends, recent innovations and upcoming standards. Mark began with a presentation that Brightcove had been involved in in Australia, 360 degree video. He asked people to go on their smartphones ( and you can do it too ) to www.Australia.com and this shows footage from about 8 locations in Australia. Once you’ve loaded it up to the location of your choice and set to “play”, this reacts to the gyroscope in your phone to show you different views – so as you turn your phone, you get a different view for the time that the clip plays. A key trend that Mark presented was that Flash from Adobe is dead. I think this points to the fact that having proprietary playing software is no longer the way to go – you only need to have JavaScript and HTML and they will power any video these days. He talked about shifting workflows into the Cloud, including things that used to be in the server room. This is becoming a true extension of the broadcast environment. He went on to talk about analytics, where daily reports are provided as to who watches what and when. One of the big topics that is being questioned by the industry is that of viewability – that when you have a statistic that a viewer is watching, how much of it is seen by the viewer, and for how long? The standard seems to be – and this is in the social media space – that if an ad is on the screen and it encompasses 50% or more of the screen for over one second, then that is regarded as a “view.” If it’s smaller than that, or on for less than that, then that is not seen as an effective view. He showed a slide entitled “Programmatic” and this is about automated ad insertion arrangements; another about server slide ads and frame accurate insertion – and in this process you can bypass ad blockers because they can’t see the ad, it’s just part of the stream. Currently Newshub in New Zealand is using this technology, so what you’re getting on the broadcast television where the ads are just part of the same stream is now part of the same stream in an online version of the same programmes. Mark gave an example from Channel 7 Australia, where they have introduced live linear. This provides live streaming the same programme across all platforms
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Switch Media.
24/7, including major events – the Tennis Open, the Melbourne Cup – and this is all live to video on demand and includes live ad insertion, again selected region for region.
Bruce Hume. This version has not been proofed by the speaker. Ed.
mstanton@brightcove.com
Bruce talked about leveraging HbbTV to deliver much more than just catch-up. He looked into live broadcasting enhanced applications games and more.
Gracenote. Dominic Malsom. Dominic provided us with an insight into the technology and use of metadata to power the world’s top music service providers, consumer electronics companies, media companies, cable and satellite operators. Dominic began with user experience – Gracenote provides the data that will power a better user experience. That data supports the way consumers view, search and discover content through imagery, synopsis and key words. All of this requires a common ID system, standardised data and localisation to purpose marketing and labelling for an audience in different countries. What they can provide is data to support the on-screen interface while an event is being viewed, a universal search showing where to find content, recommendations à la social media, automatic content recognition, and create immersive experiences with all of this for the audience. The question of course comes up here as to a person’s privacy and Dominic replied to that that yes, there are privacy concerns and it is not a service that has been launched in New Zealand at present. dmalsom@gracenote.com
The viewer’s experience is a menu bar on the broadcast screen; the viewer remotely selects data to appear on a second device, such as an iPad, so they can be looking at some show on their main screen and with the menu select, for example, something about the director of that show. It won’t appear on the main screen and interrupt the programme, but it will appear on a second device, such as an iPad, and they can look at that if they wish. Switch Media are in the process of delivering DASH live for Sony. An important part of this service is live data overlay and Hbb is basically a website over the top of a normal broadcast signal. It provides lots of information, statistics and links to VOD clips and it enables an OTT supplier to compete with a pay TV operator on live sport rather than having a multi-camera offer in the live sport domain. bhume@switch.tv
SintecMedia. Damien Thomson.
Freeview. Sam Irvine. Sam pointed out that Freeview in New Zealand is a joint venture of TVNZ, MediaWorks, Maori Television Service and Radio New Zealand. Freeview works with all Free to air Broadcasters, manufacturers, retailers, transmission providers and installers, to make sure viewers get quality Free to Air TV and radio in the areas where they are, and that everything works. Basically Freeview provides conformance for the twenty broadcasters that they’re involved with, to give a consistent viewer experience, with no subscription. HbbTV is now the main platform for FTA linear and VOD services to TV in New Zealand and Australia and Freeview is now introducing FreeviewPlus (HbbTV) which has the ability to search across all live and on demand free to air content, rather than in just one for the type of programme that you might want. This has got to make it easier for the viewer and Freeview’s future is very closely linked to developments of the HbbTV service. Sam.Irvine@freeviewnz.tv
Switch Media’s claim is that they enable delivery, monetisation and analysis on OTT services. They provide the player to Freeview and many others.
Damien spoke about the convergence of traditional broadcasting and digital media, what changes broadcasters can expect in the way their inventory will be sold and the platforms they will need to support these changes. He was quite upbeat that the outlook for broadcast has actually improved, citing a PWC statistic that TV ad spend in the USA will increase by 12% over the next 5 years. Broadcasters can learn 3 key things from digital media – 1. The need for transparency – and that’s real time access to data on a dashboard; 2. Performance; and 3. Efficiency. Broadcast media can benefit from new ways of selling; by combining their audience data with inventory they have ways of reaching only a target audience. This creates a premium segment for advertisers when they’re not wasting advertising people outside of their target. Technology currently exists to synchronise an advert that appears on television, with the same ad appearing on a website, like Facebook, where the audience is within the target audience – for example, a 38 year old more on page 13
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Techtel Provides the Cakes We’re at afternoon tea on the first day of the MTP conference here in Auckland and the delegates are very happy that we’re taking a wee break and we’re enjoying some very nice cakes. We are fortunate to have the sponsor of the cakes here and it’s none other than David Colthorpe. Ed: Now David, you didn’t actually bake these yourself, but in your position as head person of Techtel in New Zealand, you are a proud sponsor? David: Yes, we’re a proud sponsor. We like to support the industry so it’s great to have Matt Feeney our AP ENPS specialist here. He’ll be speaking tomorrow about how modern newsroom technology is responding to massive changes in the way people consume news. Ed: Well Techtel’s a pretty big player in this side of the industry, so it’s very sensible that you’re here and part of it? David: Yes, ENPS is well represented in New Zealand, so the topics at the conference this year are especially relevant to us. Ed:
Right – and perhaps one year you’ll speak?
David: Well I’m not sure about that – but we do our best to get the right people here to do that. Ed:
Great. Another teacake?
NZVN
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male who is interested in travelling. If they’re watching a television programme and it has an ad for Qantas, if, while the ads are on, they decide they’ll go to their Facebook page, at the same time, an ad for Qantas will appear on their Facebook. This can occur because they have shared their demographic profile with the broadcaster. Of course, they can’t reverse sync and put an ad on broadcast television. SintecMedia provide a platform called OnBoard, which is a holistic solution for broadcasters, enabling them to manage sales, inventory and optimisation across all their media channels. This unique Sales Side Platform (SSP) offers them increased efficiency through the sales process, and the ability to integrate their traditional sales and traffic systems with both their agency trading partners and emerging programmatic exchanges.
system improvements in their device that have taken place in the previous 3 months, so if Microsoft comes out with some new operating system that has some special features, then the customers expect that experience to be seen in the applications that an OTT service is providing; if not, they will switch to someone who does. chris.mcnair@accedo.tv
Ericsson. Khush Kundi. Khush talked about reinventing the TV experience – about how looking at virtualisation and Cloud technologies will help to overcome the challenge that the rate and scale of technology change currently presents and to create a more agile business. The provider is constantly vying for viewers’ attention.
Damien acknowledges that people react differently to targeted advertising – on one side of the equation, consumers can always use ad blockers to restrict advertising; and on the other side, you find that advertising done well is more relevant and less intrusive. He explained that the targeting comes from the digital media profile that the person has created and not from the broadcast viewing habits. So, for example, a female watching television at the same time would get a different ad on Facebook during the Qantas ad than the targeted male got. Damien.Thomson@sintecmedia.com
Accedo. Chris McNair. This version has not been proofed by the speaker. Ed.
Chris’ presentation was about the dynamic OTT user experience – that is how a modern user interface and dynamic experience can increase interaction across differing video services. He said that the user experience has not been about the screen size or the resolution. There has really been no viewing growth due to HDTV models becoming available, so it’s not about the devices … for example, set top boxes or dongles don’t increase viewing. It’s not about the content – there may be a key show that gives a bump in viewing numbers but it’s the catalogue that determines the user’s experience. Consumers evolve with the market and success for an operator comes with a number of things – 1. Valuing the multi-screen customer. If you can augment the content to enhance their experience. This can be in the form of a companion application.
What does the new TV experience need to look like? The average weekly active viewing time is around 30 hours per week. When you look at a person’s daily media habits, it’s seen that live TV viewing is going down and streamed on-demand viewing is going up. For weekly viewing situations, there has been a move from just in the morning and evening to a spread over the day, and that people are not just using in-home WiFi, they’re using mobile data too. An interesting area was that of subscription for video on demand, that it is driving binge watching, so more people are having long times of viewing one particular series in one block than they were before. A streaming device such as Chromecast from a phone can be directed to the TV, so why have a set top box? Again, a technology change technology out of the system.
that
takes
another
One of the greatest increases in viewing is in TV content that can be viewed anywhere and for this people are willing to pay more. There is some increase in interest in interactive TV, but it is “anywhere viewing” that is what most people want. In another area, a new specification for television, high dynamic range, is something that’s coming along and this is going to introduce new considerations for managing the broadcast environment. This is going to impact on the whole industry and it will be interesting to see whether this brings people back to more broadcast viewing because of its increased good looks. As a result, there needs to be a change in the operating model for providers to manage all these changes.
2. You can create a dynamic user experience – provide personalisation by getting the metadata right, though it is understood that there are privacy issues with data collection.
Khush believes that companies should look at different infrastructure technologies from on-premise to Cloud to see what is the best fit from a technical and cost perspective.
3. Evolve customer engagement models – different customers have different needs at different times.
However, the Cloud is not an answer to everything and there must be some infrastructure within an organisation and I guess that’s where Ericsson can help in choosing the right infrastructure to have for yourself.
4. Efficient application of lifestyle management – customers expect us to take advantage of the newest and the best experience that is related to the operating
khush.kundi@ericsson.com
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Object Matrix.
Google comes out with some change to its system, then a particular app is no longer necessary, and so the person who wrote the app no longer has a job.
Jon Morgan. This version has not been proofed by the speaker. Ed.
Jon talked about being futureproof with “object” storage and he looked at the rationale behind object storage. Multi-platform content delivery, digitisation and repurposing workflows; that they demand more than just a simple file system. Jon asked the question “How do you handle data in a large system that’s over 10 terabyte?” In the process of growing your data storage infrastructure, you end up with discrete silos of data and metadata, because any new technology is not often 100% compatible with the old unless it’s identical. This is that you have yourself a server with a certain array of hard drives in it of a certain size and brand and its own little infrastructure and then, after a time, that fills up and you need another one. It’s very hard to get that same technology again, or the technology’s moved forward, so in fact, you get the next model which is "bigger, faster, cheaper", but because it’s not identical, it’s very hard to link the two systems, hence the silo situation where you have to be discreet in where you keep your data. In the Object Matrix world, each object has data, metadata and policies, and each object can be on any server technology. By having an object, this allows the scale of your system to run to Petabytes. The technology allows self-healing, easy transport and does not tie you to any particular hardware. Certainly the list of users of Object Matrix technology that Jon showed was varied and included some very large customers. The cost of this was a question and on the plus side, Jon said that, because of the object nature, this can be kept on commodity hardware, so all the cost is in the software and that’s something that you need to talk to Object Matrix about. jonathan.morgan@object-matrix.com
He talked about TV3 MediaWorks – when it was established it was under-capitalised and it’s pretty well maintained that all the way through its life. It’s gone through 2 receiverships and is again currently for sale. The way that it’s looking at growing is through digital media add-on services. As with other players in the market, such as NZME which is part of APN Media, there seems to be a move towards web based presentation. Telcos such as Spark opened Lightbox; Sky opened Neon; and then Netflix came along. The value to Sky and Netflix in this situation was that both had access to content. The question one has to ask with any of these forays into entertainment through the web, is "when will there be profit?" It is believed that Lightbox has budgeted to lose $35 million this year, so there’s a lot at stake. John commented that Sky cannot afford to ignore subscription video on demand but, on the other side, it can’t make it too good or it cannibalises the income it gets from set top boxes. TVNZ tried with TiVo and it was a disaster. He then moved on to talk about the role of the journalist and stated that the concept that editorial content is separate from advertising is not so true anymore – the lines are blurring. The term “advertorial” is now called “native advertising”. Most people, when they watch media, don’t want it to be difficult; they just want to watch TV. The snake pit of wires that you find behind your television set is comparable to where media is going. Print newspapers are up against the wall; overall there’s been a 6-15% drop in readership over New Zealand papers in recent times. As to the move for video on the web as a subscription model – people are reluctant to do this because they expect it for free, which they’re getting in a lot of cases now. The unfortunate side of this is that the cost of providing an on demand service is 8 times that of a broadcast service, so the revenue must be higher. How do you do this? More ads? One of its selling points is that it has fewer ads. TVNZ has to be admired for its ambition, but who would want to buy a TV station now? For example, TiVo cost them $17 million, with a write off in the books.
The NZ Herald media columnist. John Drinnan.
MediaWorks' current CEO, Mark Waldon, MediaWorks’ future with digital development.
John gave his views on where the media landscape is trending in New Zealand. He first of all talked about how local media are dealing with challenges in change. A major challenge is for the 30+ consumer to understand the new technology. Luckily, when something happens to Netflix, most homes have a teenage boy who finally has something worthwhile to do and that’s to re-establish the connection.
sees
At the end of his presentation I asked John whether, from his interviews with them, Sky were apologetic for the huge consumer backlash for what they touted as a "new improved service"?
A company can disappear overnight if the technology change makes what they do obsolete. For example, if
John replied – “No, they’re not apologetic they don’t believe they need to be. The same problem happened in the UK and in Italy with BSkyB. My impression is that there are lots of unhappy people out there and they are aware that pricing is an issue to varying degrees for some people. To be fair, the scale of the reaction has been partly because it is the incumbent dominant player. TV One used to get the same flak when it was dominant. jdrinnan@xtra.co.nz
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Radio NZ. Bob Coombes and Carol Hirschfeld presented a case study at Radio New Zealand looking at Checkpoint with John Campbell. Carol started it off by telling us that she’d come up with a new plan for RNZ that included video with the radio news.
into the Apple offices in Auckland, but only got as far as the front door. Bob talked about RNZ reporters being big gainers and flourishing with the challenge of “radio with pictures.” He talked about it taking RNZ different places with this new technology, and that stories were the key values. The concept is intended to expand to Morning Report and there are more possibilities to come, including lots of audio podcast developments. Bob.Coombes@radionz.co.nz
MediaHub.
Initially, people were using Skype to do this but there were issues with that. She wanted to put together a model of light technology – in other words, not a capital product intensive technology but one that did not detract from making good quality radio programmes.
Alan Sweeney.
The plan was for a daily radio show of around 90 minutes, using remote cameras and automated switching. It was not to be on broadcast TV but viewable on the net. Bob, who had had previous extensive experience with TV broadcasters around the world, was brought in as the project manager. Bob liked the rules for “radio with pictures”; he liked the immediacy of presenting the News from when he saw the first Gulf War news feeds. The pictures were not of high technical standard, but they were immediate … in other words, the technical standards were secondary to News. In terms of project management, there was not a lot of television experience in the crew that they got together for Checkpoint but it worked. In the look that they wanted to create, they replicated the feel of radio, experimenting with new ideas. The studio space was very limited, so they put “point of view” cameras on sliders mounted on the wall. They had 3 boundary mics on the desk and another 3 radio mics on main presenters. The use of a NewTek TriCaster was pivotal in the design that it was all in one box. The backup was that they can use the standard matrix and just cut – luckily this has only been necessary in rehearsals so far. Of course, doing a show like this every day, you do end up with a lot of data and rather than have an off-theshelf MAM system, they set up their own human managed MAM system by setting up folders on a standard PC and dragging and dropping the data into those folders. The actual requirement for this was 85 gig a day to store the whole show, clean and dirty footage as an archive, using just standard computer storage. Bob showed an example of a live feed from the cameramen in Queen Street following John Campbell on the TPP protest, where they had a Live-U transmitter on a shoe on the camera. Checkpoint takes feeds from the Wellington studio and parliament, as well as Skype inputs from anywhere. These feeds can be a live cross from an iPhone somewhere, or the material can be stored for later use. John Campbell was shown using an iPhone to try to get
Alan talked about “Technology: the Disrupter!” He called for the industry to embrace the “Dark Lord” of technology change in the broadcast industry and release limited and valuable resources for where it matters – content. MediaHub are providers of playout services for customers. This is an Australian operation and Alan has had much experience in the broadcast world. When MediaHub was set up 5 years ago, it was an initial expenditure of over $35 million. Now he says that a large part of the initial technology infrastructure is already effectively outdated. The take-up of digital TV in Australia was very slow to start and so, initially, it seemed as though the broadcast industry had overextended themselves, but then it exploded and now the take-up of digital television in homes in Australia is over 100% because many homes have more than one television set. The way MediaHub works is that digital files arrive from clients at any time, from months previously to a couple of hours before air. At some time, a schedule will come also. The schedule is designed to matchup the media through an automated process. Changes can actually be made about 30 minutes prior to broadcast, where different media can be chosen to play at a certain time within the schedule and at different locations within Australia. Alan talked about the operation as a multiple shared client environment. In 2012, they were operating 135 channels; in 2016, 4 years later, it’s 200 and still growing. He used a case study of the ABC who currently has 35 channels going out through MediaHub and over the period of a month, they logged an average of under one minute of error overall, across all 35 channels, which is an extraordinarily low amount for that quantity of traffic, with high levels of live programming. So in the broadcast space, everything was going smoothly and then along came OTT, the Cloud and mobile, and all of this totally disrupted what they were doing. It caused their customers to be uncertain about engaging with them as an outsource provider. They didn’t want to be locked into old technology. So to counter this, they needed partnerships and they chose Hewlett Packard and Snell ( and a number of other quality Broadcast Technology providers ) to provide advice and guidance in a move to virtual
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platforms to provide 100% IP stream. This was achieved in the first quarter of 2016. With the move to IP, the cost of the technology has dropped dramatically and there are now lots more opportunities. This has released funds for their customers to invest in improving programme content. Alan.Sweeney@mediahubaustralia.com.au
AP ENPS (Techtel). Matt Feeney. Matt talked about the modern TV newsroom and how it must evolve to meet the demands of a 24-hour News cycle. News consumption habits are changing and the change has largely been driven by mobile devices, with News consumed on mobile devices more than ever. He explained that AP ENPS expands on traditional workflows by incorporating online and social media platforms and mobile reporting. Matt explained that statistics show people still see TV as the best source for accurate News, however an example of the disruption to this was given using a clip from The Colbert Report where Colbert had Jeff Goldblum live in the studio and showed a clip that appeared on the internet reporting Jeff’s death in New Zealand. Then another website that plays pranks on people renamed the dead person as Will Smith, and had him falling off a cliff in New Zealand. This story was picked up by News organisations as being true. People are accessing News stories by links from social media now, rather than by going to the front pages of News websites and clicking on an item that they find interesting. They are being directed to these News stories by social media sources of varying reputation. The statistics also show that video on print media websites are preferred over video on TV News sites. This suggests that publishers have a better understanding of the relationship between text and video and their video content complements the text. On the topic of rights management for material coming in over the web, Matt was asked if you can tag media to show that it either has to be paid for, or some sort of rights acknowledged. He replied that this can be managed through user rights. There were ways of highlighting or tagging stories so that they go through an approval process by senior members of staff before they go to air or online.
Avid. Peter Ennis. Peter talked about the next generation newsroom and that the broadcast News industry is undergoing a huge transformation. Story-centric coverage is driving News engagement across multiple platforms. He talked about the rate of change in the newsroom as accelerating; that managing and protecting a growing number of media files is getting more onerous. About 20% of the average media library has a value but which 20% – and to know which is the valuable stuff, you need reliable metadata so you can easily find it. He carried on talking about the consumption of News, that it’s changing, that social networks are taking over the role that broadcast television once had. An interesting note that, over the years, the news of wellknown personality deaths has changed; that he and I both remember hearing over the radio that Elvis Presley had died; on television that Princess Diana was killed in a car crash; Michael Jackson was reported dead online and social media reported the death recently of David Bowie. It’s seen that to get News out there you need to connect quickly. Integrated workflows and seamless integration are vital. For the reporter or the management, the question then comes "when do you break a story?" Do you do it online immediately or do you wait until your 6pm bulletin? Of course, if you don’t do it online, Facebook or somebody else who has only an online function will do it if they know about it. So in your planning, you need to look at a story-centric workflow rather than a bulletin based workflow. He went on to say that everything Avid does is based around Avid Media | Central Platform. The Media | Central Unified Experience or “UX” provides review and approvals and accuracy and it can be accessed by a mobile app which can bring everything together on something as simple as an iPad. As an example of the increasing openness of Avid and their solutions, he said that they’re now allowing other companies onto the Media | Central Platform because it’s the customer who needs to have control of what they want, and this is all inside one interface. They’re offering lots of collaboration and a means of security for the media world.
One of the ENPS products, called Mobile Suite, extends ENPS into the field. The benefits of this are that it has tools to edit a story as it is being reported, access contacts, messages and planning calendars. It includes the ability to upload content shot on mobile devices. It also includes a prompter in the mobile device application which obviously has great benefit to a reporter having everything in one place.
He stated that the APIs that Avid provides to collaborators are exactly the same ones as they use themselves.
In summary Matt proposed that ENPS has developed into a hub for all modern-day media production with workflows for repurposing any content over any medium.
There is also a new product called make.tv – again, this is from a partner company and is a public Cloud based model and here for News capturing and this is one where you can have members of the public registered in your system and you can get them to record a breaking event as a stringer, and the display shows on a map where the event is happening and which of your
NZ rep, David Colthorpe. dcolthorpe@techtel.co.nz
A new journalistic tool has been launched by x.news on the Avid Media | Central platform called Xnews. The deployment is on the Cloud and it allows aggregation of source material from multiple sources including social media.
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registered stringers are nearby, then you can immediately send a message to say “go to this place and grab what you can.” Once again it is fully compatible with Media | Central.
LTE data packets. There is a huge growth in the use of mobile data consumption for video, so there is a need for more video data bandwidth in the system and at some point the hardware is going to get overloaded.
That sounds like a very useful tool in a modern environment where so many people have smart phones with good cameras ( as long as you teach them to hold them in the landscape format.)
Existing LTE’s eMBMS standard requires 60% of the resources in mobile systems for multicasting video, while only leaving 40% for voice calls. This is not ideal as telcos prefer voice call revenue over data.
peter.ennis@avid.com
GatesAir and Technische Universität Braunschweig have come up with a solution to relieve the loading on current hardware. Broadcast transmission companies can provide the LTE data packets for video using DVBT2 and their “High Tower, High Power” approach to cover a wide coverage area.
Imagine Communications. Michael Day. Michael talked about IP infrastructure that enables content delivery. His presentation focused on the benefits of moving from traditional broadcast technology to IP and IT infrastructure. The benefits of moving to a common IT infrastructure for television were shown in a number of slides. In the move to IP, he demonstrated the way in which infrastructure can be set up from a toolbox that Imagine provides, which leverages common IT, Telco and Software systems. In this toolbox there are orchestration tools that enable the selection and composition of software modules to form applications, allowing easy construction of systems which are also flexible. If conditions change and a client requires new modules, then these can be easily added and with little or no impact. Broadcasters today rely on input, routing, processing and output hardware – and Imagine is moving these functions into the IP domain. Of course, it doesn’t have to be done all at once; IP can be integrated into a system over time, so parts of a broadcast facility can move as necessary. Michael stated that the use of public Cloud has limited application for broadcast applications and that a dedicated Cloud ( on site or hosted ) is really the only way to go if you value data security and system reliability. He added that SDI will be around for a long time to come, as it is still a very robust system, but IP technology is likely to limit its use in the future. Michael.Day@imaginecommunications.com
GatesAir. Alex Ng.
transmission market.
For background reference, GatesAir and Imagine Communication were both formerly part of the Harris Group of companies. When Harris devoted itself entirely to missiles and other military technology, the television side was sold off into Imagine and GatesAir. GatesAir is fully dedicated in its operations and development in the
Alex gave a rather technical presentation that talked about using the DVB-T2 transmission signal to transmit
For this to work ( and it was shown to work in trial in France and Italy ), the 4G specifications would need to change so that existing handsets can recognise the packets from DVB-T2 transmission. Now there’s very little likelihood of anybody wanting to change the 4G specs because 5G is coming, so nobody wants to do anything right now – they want to wait for 5G. So for the time being we would have to adopt a wait and see approach, until the network buckles under more and more bandwidth requirements. Alex.Ng@gatesair.com
CombiTel. Eugene Razbash. CombiTel has been a specialist IPTV systems integrator in both operator and enterprise markets for over 10 years, but this year’s presentation was focused on enterprise IPTV, digital sign-age and related multimedia applications. Omniscreen, a member of CombiTel Group, develops their bespoke IPTV and digital signage software deployments.
used
for
enterprise
Eugene talked about a comparison between the local service operator versus a global service provider … that the local operator runs into economies of scale problems versus a global player. One could talk about Lightbox versus Netflix as an example of the local provider versus a global platform. However, local telcos ( and other service providers alike ) could develop good business opportunities with local organisations by providing tailored IPTV-enabled services, which may be protected from global competition. Nowadays LED display is much cheaper and, by using the Cloud, an enterprise can provide material from a central server to lots of different panels all around the city or a country. Health Care and Aged Care industry applications were showcased during the presentation. A Penguin remote control activates the screen’s menu, links to any DV player that the resident wants to plug in, can target messages to different residents within the home related to their particular illness, for example no invitation to go for a walk to those that are bedridden. In other words, providing very targeted information via IPTV technology. eugene@combitel.com.au
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Camera Lighting at Newshub You may recall a story on lighting for TVNZ News in our November issue last year; well, MediaWorks Newshub has also gone LED but in the direction of some different product. Cushla Lewis is the chief camera operator for MediaWorks Newshub and I sought out Cushla because of a story we did from Amsterdam on the Aladdin LED Flex Panels. Chris McKenzie from PLS told me that Cushla was using one. Ed: Well Cushla, you’ve actually got more than one haven’t you?
Cushla ( with Ledzilla ) in action.
Cushla: Yes, here at Newshub we’ve got three of them, the single colour Flexlites. At the time we purchased them, they were reasonably expensive and we had a limited amount of money to spend on new equipment. I’ve sent one to Wellington, one to Christchurch, and we’ve got one here in Auckland.
Ed:
Is that “sharing the love”?
Cushla: Sharing the love around, yes, I like to do that with any new equipment. We don’t keep it all in Auckland, we like to share it around equally so that everybody can get some new gear. Ed: What was it about the Aladdin Flexlite that interested you? Cushla: LED lighting has changed our lives as camera operators and the Flexlites seemed like a fantastic idea. Before LED lighting, we were totally dependent on mains power or battery belts for sunguns. LED lighting has completely changed everything because they use very little power and we can plug straight into our camera batteries; it’s fantastic. The Flexlite is awesome because we can use it in all sorts of situations. You can stick it to things, you can hang it from things, you can make a little cylinder out of it, you can put it in a car, you can stick it to the roof of a car which gives you downlight … you can do all sorts of things – endless. Ed:
And it’s dimmable?
Cushla: It’s dimmable and it weighs next to nothing – it just goes into your daypack so you can take it anywhere with you to any job with ease. Ed: So when you think back to the day when I first started as a cameraman – did you use candles … no? Cushla: Ha ha no – well we used Blondes and Redheads and so that’s what we would cart around with us. I used to cart two Redheads around with me along with my camera and my battery belt and my pack and my tripod, so you know we we're pretty much like a packhorse. We still do carry a bit of gear but having lightweight easy LED lighting has just revolutionised OPC camerawork really – when we’re running around it’s just so much easier. Ed: What purpose do you use the light for – obviously it’s not a light for lighting a scene at night? Cushla: I use it all the time; I use it for just about everything I do night or day. Ed:
On its own?
Cushla: Along with my Ledzilla, which is a little Dedolight LED light onboard my camera, or I’ll use it in conjunction with another LED panel if I need to. Page 20
Ed: Say for example, you were at a roadside accident – would you use the panel for that? Cushla: I would definitely use it if I needed some extra light, but to be honest probably 80% of the time we’d use our onboard light for that kind of thing, because you’re rushing around off the shoulder. So in all honesty, it would be more for interview type situations. Ed: You’d use the panel and the onboard … in what combination? How would you set them up? Cushla: If I’m using the Ledzilla and the panel, I’d use the panel as a backlight / sidelight, or to light the background. Quite often if you’re doing an interview during the day outside somewhere, you need a little bit of extra light if it’s a sunny day, and your onboard alone doesn’t quite cut it. You need an extra bit of light and the Aladdin’s fantastic for that because it’s so bright. It’s small, flexible, really bright and you can dim it – it’s great. Ed: But when you’re balancing the background and the foreground, I’m sure you use your Ledzilla to balance? Cushla: The Flexlight that I’ve got is daylight because only tungsten or daylight was available at the time. I had to make a choice, so I chose daylight because it’s more versatile. I use it for everything – inside, outside, all over the place. What I can do is I can use the Flexlight as a sidelight – it gives you a lovely blue look and then the Ledzilla as a front key light with tungsten which then gives you lovely mixed light that looks pretty good. It looks like there’s a window beside your subject. Ed: That’s for daylight, but at night time, you’d balance against the daylight panel?
Ed:
When you had a big crew?
Cushla: When we had bigger teams yes. We don’t have the luxury of that any more, those days were gone a long time ago. We now have to be lightweight, fast and efficient and these types of LED lights, like the Aladdin, are a very useful tool for camera operators. We’ve still got a great light, but it doesn’t weigh much and it’s efficient, uses very little power and I can plug it into the camera battery. It’s fantastic. Ed: And use the same camera battery for the camera and the light? Cushla: Yes, you can take a separate battery ( I always have a spare battery in my bag ) or plug into your camera battery but the good thing about the Aladdin is that it comes with a really long cable, so if you need to plug it into your camera and have the light a good distance away, you can easily. It’s great for that – I just find it really very versatile. If I could, I would equip all Newshub camera crews with an Aladdin. It’s a flexible, lightweight, dimmable and bright LED light – fantastic! Ed: But still on the subject of lights, you also recently purchased some Lowell Blenders? Cushla: Yes, I purchased three sets of Lowell Blenders and there were I think three lights in each kit. I kept a kit in Auckland and sent a kit to Wellington and a kit to Christchurch. The reason I went with the Lowell Blenders is that again they’re small and light, different from the Aladdins because they’re not flexible obviously, they’re just little square lights, but they’re really light so you can pack a couple of them into your day kit without much trouble. You get your nice front light and your backlight, it’s got colour, you can change from tungsten to daylight, they also have filters. It’s pretty much everything you need in a small LED light
Cushla: Yes I would just put the light on and do a white balance and it comes out fine – the background looks interesting. Ed:
Cameras have become a lot more “forgiving”?
Cushla:
Totally, yes.
Ed: So in fact, even though you’ve got a daylight setting on one light and you’ve got a tungsten on the other, it’s not the same as it used to be with the old tube cameras? Cushla: It is a bit different. You still have to know what you’re doing, so it’s just manipulating your filters, the light that you have available and the light that you introduce. You can turn the light off, do a balance; you can have one light on, do a balance, you get a different colour effect, turn them both on. It’s just knowing what you can do and manipulating it to get it looking the best that you possibly can, because that’s what you’re trying to achieve. So with News … Ed:
It’s all about content, please say that?
Cushla: It is about content – we’re about content, but we’re also about trying to make things look the best that we can in a short amount of time, so it’s all about speed and efficiency and making something look really good when you’re under tight time constraints gathering content. Ed: And also, the person you’re interviewing quite often could be in a stressful situation, so you don’t want to faff around setting up lights and saying “Oh can we do that again, because I didn’t get something quite right” – you want to get it right first time? Cushla: That’s right. The way we work has changed – News changes constantly and gets busier. We used to have a lot more time to do lighting and camera work in general. Page 22
It takes seconds to set up.
and they are reasonably powerful, which is what we need. I was really impressed with them actually – although I think the Aladdin is more powerful / versatile and if I could get the Aladdin Bi-Flex with the tungsten / daylight dual light I’d be rapt. But the Lowell Blenders are great little lights because, again, they’re really light and easy to use, you can move them around. They’re fantastic – and you can use camera batteries to power them, or they come with batteries and you can also power them from the mains if you need to. Ed: So really it’s an ergonomic choice – the Aladdin panel has just that little bit more flexibility? Cushla: The best thing is that you can roll up the Aladdin, you can pack it, it’s just so light it weighs next to nothing. And it’s got the most powerful LEDs on it, it’s really bright; I love it. Another fantastic thing about these Aladdin panels is that if you’re in a bunfight – you know, a media scrum, and it happens to get pushed over, it doesn’t break. It’s fantastic, not like any other light. All other lights they fall over, smash, you know that’s it, but these are great. You can knock them around and they still work, it’s fantastic. Ed:
And you can take it out in the rain?
Cushla: I haven’t actually tried it in a huge downpour, but you can easily just put a little plastic bag over them, which I’ve done before to protect them and it’s fine. Ed: And it can be any old plastic bag, as long as it’s clear, because it’s not going to burn? Cushla:
That’s right, any clear plastic bag.
Ed: Now, when you’re into a large situation – say there’s a bit of a group, obviously one Aladdin panel’s not going to cut it. What do you use in that situation? Cushla: Well we’ve got a great big HMI light which we can use. We actually purchased it for the Rugby World Cup because we were doing our whole News bulletin at the time from down at the Viaduct and, of course, it was summer, so competing with sunlight, we needed to get something that was a very powerful light. We found that the HMI worked really, really well and it’s been a fantastic light, we keep it in our Livecross van and we use it for all sorts of things. Ed:
There are situations where you need lots of light?
Cushla: Yes, and to be honest, we still have an old Blonde and a couple of old Redheads that at times we still pull out. I mean, they’re real good old standard lights that you can’t go past. Ed: For the actual quality of light, but it’s just the time you take to set it up, find the power point …? Cushla: Exactly, yes. If you’re filming in a controlled situation and there are no crowds of people and there’s available power, you can’t beat a Blonde as a backup at times. They are strong reliable lights. But the HMI is a lot stronger for when you’re battling sunny situations. LED lighting is the way of the future and gets better all the time. Ed: Now when you were talking about your oncamera lights, you used the term “sungun” but I understand that, amongst your crews, there’s quite a variety of on-camera lights? Cushla: Well when I say “sungun” I mean an onboard camera light. We depend on these a lot for
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News because most of the time that’s all you’ve got. You’re running around and you are very dependent upon your onboard camera light. In my 20 years of shooting News, I’ve never found the “perfect” onboard camera light. I do find the Ledzilla made by Dedolight pretty good, but lots of camera ops try different things. Here at Newshub we have tried different types of panels, we’ve tried all sorts of onboard camera lights but there’s so many things that we need to take into consideration – there’s powering it, making sure that it doesn’t use too much of your battery power – very important, you don’t want your battery going down in the middle of a job. The other big thing is moisture – rain – because we’re often out in the rain. A lot of onboard camera lights don’t allow for that, so the minute you get a bit of rain they stop working. So there’s lots of different things … and you don’t want it to be too big because it gets in the way, it gets knocked, it falls off, it gets smashed. It has to be a hardy, waterproof, really good light that doesn't drain your battery too much, so there’s a lot of things to consider. The following day, I went "on location" with Cushla to the Manukau Police Station. Ed: Now Cushla, while we are waiting for the other News crew to arrive, just a little bit more about your
The Flexlight gives an even light.
Ledzilla. This is currently your onboard camera light of choice? Cushla: Yes it definitely is, I like it, it’s great because you can spot it, you can change the colour temperature on it and it’s small, light, powerful and it’s reasonably waterproof. Ed:
But you’ve taken the barndoors off?
Cushla: camera.
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Yes, they get in the way and scratch the It’s just better for me to work fast without
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close-up interview, but you find this Ledzilla pretty powerful?
them, I don’t need them and I’ve never used them. Ed:
And the filter – that’s come off too?
Cushla: That’s come off because I don’t use it. The light has a dimmer so I don’t need the filter as it cuts out too much light. I just never used it, so for me that’s just something that gets in the way of my speed. So anything that gets in the way of me working quickly, I get rid of it. It’s got a little colour temperature dial on it, so you can dial up tungsten or daylight or a mix – whatever you want.
Cushla: I find it pretty good; it’s the best one that I’ve come across. I know other camera ops choose larger panels to have on top of their cameras, but I find that bigger lights get in the way and they get knocked off. You don’t want something that’s going to stick out and break off if you smack it into the wall or whatever accidentally.
Ed: So that enables you to balance against the Aladdin panel? Cushla: Yes I like to mix my light up a bit and I try to make the light look as natural as possible, as good as possible in a short amount of time, so having that combination of the flexible panel and my light on top of my camera, I can actually come up with a pretty good effect quickly. News is all about speed and accuracy and trying to get the pictures to look as good as possible. Ed: Certainly in the past, your on-camera lights have really been a bit pathetic in terms of brightness; they were just a key light for a Page 26
Ed: Okay, at the moment, we’re in the foyer of the Manukau Police Station and you’ve got your camera, your onboard light, your panel and a stand and your tripod and your reporter – we’re just waiting to find out what we’re going to do. We don’t even know if this interview is inside or outside? Cushla: And this is pretty much the way News goes; we often never know what we’re going to do or where we are going to and we often never know where we will end up. Most of our jobs just happen during the day and you don’t know where you’re going to be but that's exciting I think. Like this morning, I dressed for a sports day, because I thought there was going to be a lot of sport today, but I ended up having to go to Air New Zealand for the announcement of their profit share and I kind of felt a little bit under-dressed, but you just have to go with it. Everything can change in a second! Ed: Now as the Newshub camera supervisor you must be constantly fielding calls from other camerapeople out in the field? Cushla: Yes, I look after all of the camera operators in Auckland and assist the rest of the country, including all the camera vehicles and all of the equipment, so I spend a lot of time talking to people not just in Auckland but in Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. Even on the weekends I get calls if something goes wrong or if somebody needs help of some kind. We also employ stringers in different parts of the country that we can’t get to in a hurry. so it’s quite a number. We’ve actually got 36 vehicles and 32 full time camera operators within our Newshub team.
Ed: And, as we said before, News is all about content? Cushla: It’s all about content, but you know we don’t just shoot content for Television News now, we’re working with online radio and television, we are a multiplatformed business now. We’re gathering information and content for lots of different platforms. Ed:
But you can’t beat some nice pictures?
Cushla: It’s a dying luxury – having the luxury of time to shoot nice pictures. Once that’s what proudly specialised in really lovely picture stories within Current Affairs and News … now we do our best in the short amounts of time with what we have. We do our best and I think the product that Newshub produces is a top class product considering the time constraints and daily pressures. I’m proud of all my camera team, they’re very competent camerapeople; they’re the best in the country. For all the situations that we’re thrown into, we do extremely well. It’s not like the old days where you used to have 3 or 4 people in a crew – you had a sound person, a lighting person, a director, reporter and a camera operator. Those days are long gone in television; we do everything. We do the sound, the lighting, the camera – and you have to do your best. There’s always a compromise, but you do your best. Ed:
Good gear helps.
Cushla: It sure does; it's really important to keep current with equipment so content delivery is fast and NZVN efficient.
Ed: Do you ever look at their footage and sort of say “Oooh, something needs to be done with that camera or that lighting’s not right”? Cushla: Usually, if something stands out, people will draw your attention to it pretty quickly, or you’ll see it and go “Whoa, what’s going on there?” Ed: But they give you the responsibility of calling that person? Cushla: There are a number of people who will take action. If we see something that stands out, we’ll go "There’s something not quite right with that camera, or what has gone wrong there” This does happen but not very often thankfully! We try to do our best at keeping an eye on any problems but it’s not always possible, because we’re all so busy all the time.
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