Well, all those programs were produced using the latest Sony digital technology.
No matter what your budget or the type of program that you're producing,
there's always a piece of kit to suit your requirements,
ranging from a handheld DV cam right through to state-of-the-art digital cinematography.
But the trick is to choose the right tool for the job.
Whether you're a viewer at home or a program maker, life will never be the same.
There'll be more choice and more decisions to make.
As new technology redefines both viewing and the art of program making.
The whole business of using that type of new technology for us is exciting
because it expands the opportunities that we have within the budgets that we're given.
What I'm looking for is quality, imagination and ambition.
I will expect them to find the right kind of kit to deliver on those three things.
We have DV, SP and digital Betacam and we use the best whenever possible.
But with so much choice, these decisions aren't always that easy.
Stick with us and we'll show you what's on offer
and how to get the best out of that new technology.
More and more program makers are looking to technology to reduce costs.
But with Sony's Betacam SX, you'll not only save money,
you'll get productions that don't have to compromise on quality.
Betacam SX has all the pedigree and familiarity of standard beta,
but that's where the similarity ends.
It's digital, offering widescreen at the flick of a switch,
and the remarkable thing is that it could cost you less than a standard beta shoot.
Bazel is very well known for making leisure-based game shows
at a low unit cost in the studio.
And my challenge was how to deliver factual programming on location
at the same sort of cost.
We've used a new digital stock, Betacam SX, on two series,
Animal Casualty for Carlton and Lion Country.
We've used a new digital stock, Betacam SX, on two series,
Animal Casualty for Carlton and Lion Country for BBC One.
And that's given us a very good quality at the same sort of cost as BetaSP,
higher definition, slower rolling stock, so we get more for the table.
We've actually found that the SX kit is remarkably good, actually.
Lightweight, a lot of it's hand-held, so it's very user-friendly from that point of view.
Very comfortable piece of equipment.
I actually really recommend it.
Certainly, over the SP, I would choose SX.
The quality of SX compared to Beastcam is wonderful.
The view I've had on the three or four hundred tapes through now
is that we haven't had any really bad pictures
between very low lighting, caves and cellars everywhere
through to helicopter shots, which is as normal.
Compared to DVCam, DVC Pro, I find it a lot better.
It's much more of a professional choice.
I find the other ones still beginning to get there.
They're a lower quality, good for certain applications,
but for run-of-the-mill broadcast material, they're just not really up to the job.
We've looked at the quality of SX, and it's giving us much higher definition.
The contrast is better.
It's actually superb on screen.
Really, we looked at it and it's the same price.
We actually started recording the inserts on film 11 years ago,
which was very time-consuming and very expensive.
We then went down the beta SP route for several years,
and now this year we've decided to use SX.
I imagine there's some sort of Scottish connection in this household,
because judging by these rather dual black and white photographs...
The pictures themselves are fantastic.
Besides that, other small things which are really useful,
like being able to have timecode and vision on the monitor.
The colour playback, colour viewfinder, absolutely fantastic as well.
I think SX actually has very good value, certainly in terms of tape costs.
We've already done 50 days on location with Keyhole this year,
so we get through tapes pretty quickly.
They're very competitively priced,
so in that respect it's obviously been good for us too.
But SX doesn't just revolutionise the shooting stage of your production.
There's a range of new low-cost online quality SX editors
which combine the best of tape and disc technology.
But if you want to stay in your existing suite or favourite facility,
just ask them to plug in an SX instead of a beta.
It's that simple.
And if you don't have the luxury of a sofa and a drinks cabinet out in the field,
well, there's still the Edit Suite for you.
It's the battery-operated briefcase version that can travel the world.
No matter what the format that you shoot in, it can play it back,
be it PAL, NTSC, digital SX or, of course, standard beta.
SX is also ideal for the high-pressure, fast turnaround world of news and sport,
combining new lightweight equipment with hard-earned experience.
With all the newsmakers at the Ryder Cup Golf using Betacam SX,
Sony is helping to revolutionise coverage of world-class events.
SX
Choice without compromise.
But it's not just the relatively sedate sport of golf
that's using these latest Sony cameras.
One of the world's most gruelling and demanding events is also the most testing for kit.
But Betacam SX proved itself under extreme conditions
and captured some stunning shots.
The Camel Trophy is second only to the Olympics and World Cup.
It has huge international audiences,
and SX was the format chosen to be beamed around the world.
Over four billion people tuned in.
There's a fork in the road, but it's not on the road.
And low-cost DV cam for team video diaries brought a new dimension to this international event.
Commissioners like to hear the word DV now because it's smart.
You drop in DV quite a lot because most commissioners don't really understand what it means.
In the last few years we've seen a huge revolution, of course,
in the use of small digital cameras that can produce quality
that's far better than any of those old film cameras ever could do.
They're the Zap camera of the 90s,
and extremely good quality at that.
There are quite a few different reasons for using DV cameras.
One is I want the MTV look.
I want it to look off the wall.
I'm so bloody trendy. I'm a teenager. Isn't this fun?
And whatever drugs you're taking, can I have some too?
You can drive over them.
Whereas you wouldn't drive over a 60 grand kit,
you drive over a little DV kit because it's only a couple of grand.
Another reason is to simply get costs down.
The Really Useful Show is a daytime, daily consumer show.
Now, one of the key things about daytime budgets is that they are efficient.
Daytime programmes have to be highly efficient,
and we have to look very carefully at our budgets, at our costings,
and how we price every programme that we do.
One of the ways to help reduce those costs is to complement
live studio work with cost-effective DV cameras on TV.
One of the best things about using these sorts of formats
is the fact that we can be very fast to react to stories which are breaking.
We can just give them to people.
They can go out and report them speedily,
and also they can actually report them in the way that they see them.
So we actually get something which is slightly different
to what we would get if we sent out a professional crew.
Well, I think it's a good idea to have a live show
where we can be very fast.
Well, I think it's sort of fit for purpose, really, is the key,
which I know is a bit of a cliché, but actually it absolutely is right.
There are some things which we will use a full OB for,
we'll use a full crew for.
There are other things where we will use DV cameras.
Consumer DV cameras really have revolutionised the programme-makers' armoury,
but they really were designed for domestic use,
and as such they have certain limitations in the professional environment.
But Sony have listened to the professionals and come up with DVCam.
It has all the benefits of the original DV
and some special features for the professionals.
As we move forward as a motor manufacturing,
developing and designing our cars,
it's really with the way we produce our television.
Most recently we've moved from using standard beta crews
to go to using DVCam cameras.
These cameras give us flexibility in time and money
so that we can perhaps get to shoots
that otherwise would have taken a lot of setting up.
We went to San Francisco recently where Ford were filming
the launch of the new Puma.
We were asked if we would like to cover the making of that commercial.
We've looked at the cost of that and thought, well, we can't do that.
Ten days in San Francisco is going to cost an awful lot of money.
DVCam gave us the flexibility to just send one person over there for the week.
I think DVCam has probably reduced our shooting budget by two thirds.
So not only can we go to more places,
but we can go there in a very cost-effective manner.
There are some places, however, that are more difficult to get to.
When you're hundreds of feet up a cliff face
in some of the world's most remote locations,
the compactness and reliability of professional DVCam
can give you that almost impossible edge.
I do have a lot of mixed emotions about climbing.
I don't always like it because it's tunnel vision sort of thing.
You have to get fairly fanatical if you want to be a good climber.
I'm going to do everything I can to stay out of this crap.
I can't believe it.
Get sliced up inside that.
Can't hear the sounds of tearing flesh yet.
See you. Coming soon.
We're trying to get the maximum amount of time on location
for the budget that we have.
And I think nowadays film is a pretty expensive option.
So for this series, we looked at DVCam as a new medium.
We had a lot of reservations initially.
Was it tested in the field? Would it work?
Would it stand up to the sort of use and abuse that we would give it?
But by and large, we're delighted that the cameras have been as robust as they have been.
When you're five miles high in a balloon and trying to make programmes,
life can get quite tricky.
But by choosing the right formats, you can get some stunning results.
We had a mixture of digital beta cam and DVCam.
And the results we got from that were extremely pleasing.
And the mixture, in fact, produced an effect which I would say is very, very creative.
But in fact, what it produced was a texture.
And it gave us a great flexibility.
And the film was enhanced by being shot in both formats.
We do not use domestic or digital cameras as a money saving device.
We use those cameras as a means of complementing professional top end camera equipment.
So, DV and DVCam producing some pretty great pictures at pretty great prices.
But for those who insist on the ultimate, well, it's got to be digital cinematography
now being used in some pretty ground breaking shows.
The Teletubbies have undoubtedly taken the world by storm.
These colourful characters live in the world where television comes from
and are using top of the range cameras to export both the characters and pictures around the globe.
Well, the nature of the show, as you probably know,
is based around the four characters who are very, very colourful.
And they live in a set in an environment that is also very colourful.
So we've got a very blue, vibrant background.
We've got four very vibrant, colourful costumes.
Teletubbies!
So we wanted to shoot in a format that would bring those colours out
and give us a sense of high contrast.
Of course, digital works very well for that.
Shooting in digital has been a great advantage to us,
particularly in the post-production process,
in as much that a lot of the graphics that we use on Teletubbies,
we didn't have to go back to the original Russia's tape.
So quite often we're working off third or fourth generation tapes,
which with absolutely no dropout and no degradation in quality at all.
But it's not just the Teletubbies that are travelling the world.
ITV's hit travel programme, Wish You Were Here,
is capturing some stunning locations with digital cinematography.
We use digital Betacam because it is absolutely clean.
It's as clean as we can get.
And Wish You Were Here is having started electronic and being the leading edge.
When it came out two or three years ago, we said, this is for us.
We tried it, we bought it, and it's worked beautifully well for us.
We went out to buy the best possible kit,
knowing that 16x9 was coming along.
Our programmes are ideal for 16x9.
The Horizon is 16x9, Ships are 16x9, Motorcars are 16x9.
It's waiting for us along for that two-shot,
the deep two-shot with the ship in the background.
But it's on the more traditional dramas that digital Betacam is at its best.
Bombay Blue was on location for over 20 weeks,
and the end results speak for themselves.
When I started shooting, I was looking for a gritty image.
I was looking for a gritty image.
When I started shooting, I was looking for a gritty,
in-your-face, handheld style of filming.
I wanted to shoot in available light.
I wanted to be able to run with it.
And certainly the experience that I had with the digital Betacam, it works.
The great thing about India is that it's so bright and so colourful.
I wanted to get that onto tape.
The interesting thing about Bombay is that you're working in temperatures
of 110 degrees, humidity levels of 85 percent,
and dust that you wouldn't believe.
The camera worked well.
We had no problems with it.
Sometimes we thought we could fry an egg on it,
but it worked without any problems at all.
Over the last 15 years, the name Sony has been the number one choice for programme makers.
Now with its new generation of camera and edit equipment,
it can help a whole new generation of programme makers
navigate their way through the programme-making jungle.
The digital world is quite confusing, but there's one name you can trust.
With Sony, you get a choice, not a compromise.
We're not interested in making low-quality programmes.
We're interested in making a range of programmes,
and we'll use a range of different kits in order to achieve that range.
Thank you.