The Collectv appoints Fiona Shadbolt as operational coordinator

Former Olympic Channel Planning Producer bolsters The Collectv’s growing team 

 The Collectv, the Emmy award-winning broadcast solutions and workflows consultancy, today announced the appointment of Fiona Shadbolt as Operational Coordinator. With extensive experience in television and digital platforms, Fiona will coordinate operational movements on projects and take charge in dealing with The Collectv’s clients, scheduling equipment and crew and all logistical movements. 

 With over fifteen years of experience in the media industry, Fiona joins The Collectv from Olympic Channel in Madrid, where she held the role of Planning Producer and oversaw the planning of global assignments for the daily content team and supported senior editors. Prior to this, she worked as Planning Manager and Coordinator at SNTV, where she arranged crews and logistics for sporting events such as the Olympics, FIFA World Cup, UEFA European Championships and the IAAF World Athletics Championships.

Soraya Robertson, Commercial Director at The Collectv, said: “We are delighted that Fiona has joined us at a crucial point in our ongoing expansion. She brings a wide breadth of knowledge and experience from her work at Olympic Channel, and her expertise will boost our team’s ability to manage all manner of projects - from a single DIT with kit on location, through to large scale reality shows and sports events.”

Shadbolt added: “I am thrilled to be joining The Collectv as Operational Coordinator. There are many exciting projects coming up and I am looking forward to using my experience and expertise to help broaden and grow the business.”

The appointment of Fiona Shadbolt comes after The Collectv expanded its UK-based team at the end of 2020 by welcoming new engineers.

The Collectv helps ensure Dancing on Ice’s smooth return to UK screens

The Collectv, the Emmy award-winning broadcast solutions and workflows consultancy, will be playing an instrumental part in ensuring that ITV Studios Entertainment’s smash hit Dancing on Ice reaches a live audience of millions when it returns to UK screens on 17 January.

Shot at a purpose-built facility at Bovingdon Airfield, just south of Hemel Hempstead, the show has been remotely produced at ITN Productions in London since the 2019 season. The Collectv ensures this process runs smoothly by providing media management, integration, and support on location at Bovingdon, helping to ensure not only that the right material gets into the main broadcast OB, but is also supplied back to the production team in London to provide content for ongoing social media clips, VTs, and more.

The workflow sees The Collectv provide an Avid station on location, for ingest, QC, and rapid editing in case of changes during the live broadcast. Alongside this, it provides Avid Nexis storage for handling VTs from the edits and to stream onto when the show is on air. This is linked in turn to multiple EVS units running IPDirector and XTAccess provided by host Outside Broadcast provider Telegenic. Connectivity between Bovingdon and London is provided by NEP Connect via a 10GB pipe.

“This set up gives us the ability to schedule and control the exact feeds the production will need,” explains Chris Sarson, Managing Director of The Collectv. “We have the ability to stream or clip up the clean or dirty TX streams on any number of the camera feeds. When on-site, we remain in constant communication with the post production supervisor for Dancing On Ice, Daniel Searle, and ensure we have the correct version of each VT. If they’re being edited close to transmission, we liaise with production and the EVS operators on-site to help ensure the right content gets to air.”

This workflow also operates the other way. Once the show is on air the team in London watches the live output and can flag up specific incidents that might help tell a story that has been developing outside of the main show, for instance. Then The Collectv team can simply find and clip up the specific ISO (ISOlated camera feed) featuring the footage and get it into the edit. Careful planning is needed with Telegenic to ensure the EVS servers can handle all that is being asked of them from both the live broadcast and The Collectv’s post teams.

“We have been involved with Dancing on Ice since we were ITV staff back in 2006,” comments Soraya Robertson, Commercial Director at The Collectv. “A lot has changed since, the production moving to its current purpose-built home after a hiatus and then implementing a remote production workflow, which is happily making it easier to deal with any Covid-related issues this season. Live TV is always challenging, but it is a great team we work with and we’re looking forward to the first broadcasts going out later this week.”

Dancing On Ice returns to UK screens on ITV1 every Sunday.

The Collectv announces London HQ expansion and new hires to meet growth demands

New London HQ has tripled in size and new appointments bring over 26 years combined experience in the TV and film industry

The Collectv, the Emmy award winning broadcast solutions and workflows consultancy, announces its expansion with new appointments to its growing team and a new head office facility in London, England. After experiencing another year of exponential growth, the expanded team and additional space needed for the London base will further strengthen The Collectv’s position and worldwide network offering. 

It has been another year of successful partnerships, resulting in The Collectv providing innovative workflow services to a variety of notable programming, including the Winter, Spring and Autumn series of the BBC ‘Watches’. Netflix also relied on The Collectv to provide ground-breaking bespoke workflow solutions for two Netflix Original shows, ‘Sing On!’ created with Hello Dolly, an independent production company and an unusual hybrid workflow for the reality hit, Too Hot to Handle, created with Talkback, a Fremantle production company. The Collectv were responsible for the recording, media management, on site edit and secure media backup, which resulted in one of the highest quality records of any fixed rig seen before.  

As sports returned to our screens in 2020 after the first UK lockdown, The Collectv faced new challenges, including successfully providing services to Sky Sports for World Championship Darts at Alexandra Palace in London, implementing a Covid-19 optimised workflow. Additionally, The Collectv celebrated another fantastic season with Formula One in 2020, continuing to provide them with support of their F1 operation, as well as working with Box to Box on the Netflix F1 series ‘Drive to Survive’.

 The Collectv has demonstrated its continuing growth in a competitive industry by expanding their head office and facility in London. Remaining in their original location of Kingston-Upon-Thames in South West London, the new facility has tripled in size. With easy connection to central London, the new facility has over 145 sqm of space for storage and marks a new chapter of growth since their entry into the market in 2014. 

As one of only a few fully independent technical television service providers, people are The Collectv’s most important asset. Growing their UK based team, The Collectv team welcomes Robert Whittock, who has been appointed as one of the new Media Systems Engineers. Whittock brings 18 years of experience in the TV and film industry, joining The Collectv from Gravity Media, and bringing substantial experience and knowledge of Avid and EVS integration to his new position.  

He is joined by Charles Hall-Freeman, who joins The Collectv as a Media Systems Engineer from Gravity Media, where he was an Avid/EVS Technical Support Engineer, bringing over 8 years of experience and expertise in broadcast and postproduction technologies. Past roles also include managing and supporting the technical requirements of post-production and broadcast studio facilities at Middlesex University whilst also working as a freelance engineer.

“In 2020, we’ve seen an increased demand for more bespoke and remote productions in light of recent shifts within the industry. We’ve continued to work hand in hand with productions and broadcasters from the start of any project, meaning our workflows are built to fit specific needs, and to assist our production partners in delivering even greater content,” said Chris Sarson, Managing Director at The Collectv. “Our newest members of The Collectv team also bring a wealth of unrivalled experience, technical knowledge and market understanding, which makes them all perfect assets to our team.”

The Collectv wrangles data on latest BBC Daytime show

The Collectv are proud to have worked on Ricochet’s latest show for BBC Daytime, Bidding Room.  The Collectv worked closely with the production team to help devise a solution that worked for this brand new production. 

Using their knowledge from OB’s on tight schedules and fly away systems, The Collectv used their densely populated and hugely powerful Avid transcode system, to get through the numerous camera and audio cards each day. 

The Collectv’s Managing Director, Chris Sarson, had this to say, ”Our preferred workflow, to avoid errors in post later on, is to use Avid on location to check the integrity of the files.  This, along with creating multiple copies of the master files, while following productions strict naming convention, helps to ensure the production can run as efficiently as possible.  This is crucial to so many of our productions, as everyone battles with time and cost constraints.”  All media was prepared ready for Ricochet’s experienced in house post production team, to receive the rushes and get on with the edit as quick as possible. 

Bidding room airs on BBC One from Monday 8th June at 15:45

Too Hot to Handle - Fixed Rig

Friday saw Netflix release all 8 episodes of it’s most exotic and exciting fixed rig show.  This Netflix Original created with Talkback, a Fremantle production company, will contain many firsts in this genre.  The Collectv were responsible for the recording, media management, on site edit and secure media backup; which resulted in one of the highest quality records of any fixed rig seen before.  An unusual hybrid workflow was devised to allow productions needs to be met, while getting the most out of all the technology but keeping the workflow efficient.

“It was made clear from the start, that it was really important for the audience to see this exotic location in all it’s glory. They didn’t want anything to be lost in the technical process between lens and screen. We put in a lot of work to ensure we met their technical and creative specification. From The Collectv’s point of view, we are only there to facilitate and support the production teams deliver their creative vision. Working together with the production and broadcasters teams so closely from the start, meant we got the best out of our equipment and built our workflow to fit their specific needs. Everyone who has seen the show has commented on how good the final result looks and we couldn’t wait to see it.  We’re really proud to have been involved.” Chris Sarson, Managing Director The Collectv.