JB Communications seeks full time technical production manager
Realtime Presentations that Rock, Roll, and Move… in Realtime, from Joys
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This is the first regular newsletter from AV Booker. We are hoping to bring our members news from across the industry. If you have anything you would like to share with your colleagues then please e-mail us. We are looking for anything of interest, from the latest piece of kit you have just purchased (hire facility) or learnt (freelancer), to the best venue you have used or that funny story we all eventually hear about.Back to top I Back to Homepage
JB COMMUNICATIONS - COMPANY PROFILE: A well-established production company, JB is proud of its heritage and legacy of 36 years experience in corporate communications. We have worked with and retain a large portfolio of blue chip clients. Over the years our projects have involved many household named companies and brands. One of the original UK production companies, JB is still independently owned, selling complete communication solutions, through message consultancy, creativity and expert execution. Our core business has always been in live events, helping our clients communicate with their internal and external audiences. Although we have evolved other offerings, and use multi media extensively, live events remain the true heart of our business, and we retain a genuine passion for doing them. There are two main aspects to our business. The long-established and successful bespoke solutions side requires high levels of creativity and true innovation. But in response to marketplace demands, JB has also evolved an off-the-shelf total events package called JB “Out of the Box” – an offering specifically designed to provide rapid response, value for money and professional quality for budget conscious clients. We offer our clients exceptional value for money and the best in quality control. Our own in-house set building department is backed with a comprehensive and current stock of our own high quality technical equipment. In spite of nearly four decades in business JB remains ambitious, and is putting in place a five year plan designed to drive the business in a number of ways, and make the best of our knowledge, reputation, talent, facilities and expertise. This is an exciting time to be joining. JB communications offices are in Hammersmith, West London, with the set-building studio and technical storage in Tetbury, Gloucestershire. To see for yourself please visit www.jbcommunications.co.uk & www.jboutofthebox.co.ukOVERVIEW OF TECHNICAL PRODUCTION MANAGER (TPM) ROLE: Reporting to the Directors, this is a key role in supporting JB’s five-year business plan. This is a role that offers both immediate opportunity and longer-term potential. With a strong engineering background, preferably familiar with sound, video and lighting, the TPM will be a practical, hands-on individual capable of working as an effective member of the JB team and on their own. Primarily focused on effective and professional technical delivery and support of the JB Communications business and JB “Out Of The Box” offering, the post holder will be fully accountable for this area both from a technical and a commercial point of view. Excellent personal organisation skills and an ability to work accurately under pressure are natural pre-requisites for the role. Ability to manage within budgets is vital. You will be part of a close-knit team and will be expected to liaise closely with all parts of the business, especially our set-building facility. As you will also be required to work with external parties and freelancers good communication and interpersonal skills are an absolute must. This is a physically demanding role, often requiring you to work extended hours and away from home. You will be expected to show that you are fully prepared to take on this level of commitment. This role offers the potential for personal development, and the post-holder will be encouraged to contribute to the creative process around specific jobs. With the right experience or drive, the TPM could in time take personal ownership of entire OOTB projects. So the ability to have good client handling skills, take client briefs and produce the projects, or a clear desire to develop that skill would be valuable. The rewards for the appointed individual will include a competitive salary, inclusion in any company reward and recognition scheme, personal training and development and the opportunity to work on exciting and often ground-breaking projects and events. Close support and direction will be given, but the Production Manager will be expected to take as much responsibility as possible, whilst working within agreed guidelines and to agreed standards.
Job Description:
Job Title: Technical Production Manager
Reports to: Director
Role definition:
Normally the technical lead member of the delivery team. She/he has overall responsibility and accountability for ensuring that any technical equipment (sound, video, lighting) and technical crew is “present and correct” onsite to deliver any JB or OOTB event.
The TPM will be responsible for overseeing the prepping and upkeep of our technical equipment and working with the set building to maximise the overall support to the company and best use of the studio space in Tetbury.
On typical JB jobs the TPM will be working with a producer to deliver the events and working to budgets agreed. The TPM will work with Set-building and the designated Producer to agree plans and budgets for all forth-coming events. She/he may be invited to contribute to the creative process.
Ideally immediately, (but possibly longer term) the PM would be capable of taking briefs directly from clients seeking OOTB events, and delivering them to budget and client satisfaction.
In the short term, when times are quiet, the TPM may also be asked to supply technical engineering support on-site for other JB activities.
Responsibilities:
- Maintaining JB owned equipment
- Advising producers on technical support needed on specific projects
- Booking external technical equipment as necessary
- Crew selection and booking
- Securing appropriate JB resource
- Adding in technical production schedule to overall production schedule
- Presenting/agreeing technical production budgets to producers/client
- Continuing client liaison (OOTB)
- Supplier/freelancer liaison
- Production of Risk Assessment / H&S documents where required by venues
- Onsite management
- Organising transport for set/ all equipment
- Checking final supplier invoices against budgets agreed.
- Advising on new technologies which could improve the company offering
- Adherence to the principles set out in the JB Mission, Vision and Values
- Compliance with the commitments set out in the JB Employees’ Handbook
Accountabilities:
- Meet deadlines as set out in production schedule; or as agreed with producer or client
- Work to agreed guidelines and standards – especially in relation to safe working practices
- Ensure they secure the appropriate resources and skills to complete a job
- Ensure proper and complete closure of a project by checking all crew supplier invoices against original budget.
- Ensure appropriate escalation of any issues which cannot be resolved in day-to-day management of a project
Salary - £30k to £35k depending on experience
Please send CV’s to tony@jbcommunications.co.ukBack to top I Back to Homepage
A new graphics display system from Joys promises to turn the presentation market on its head. As an add-on to its existing Spyder ultra widescreen control system, or as a stand alone presentation solution, 3DLive utilises the power of the graphics processor (GPU) available in many of todays latest display cards, to offer amongst many features - realtime 3D graphics, rich textures, reflections, animation, live updating of content, and super smooth playback and cueing of embedded video and media.Joys has a long standing reputation for delivering high quality innovative solutions in the live event market, and with their technological know-how and creative talent, are helping clients communicate their message dynamically.
Developed specifically for live events and conferences, 3DLive technology is exclusive to Joys. It is a real-time three dimensional graphics system, where content is rendered, or created as one watches it. With other animation systems, many hours of "rendering" are often required to achieve a similar look, but its the way that 3DLive uses the GPU in the display card that is key to its success.
3DLive is based around a virtual world or stage, where content can be displayed and updated automatically, so information feeds can come from many sources including the internet, databases, text files and spreadsheets. It has taken a lot of it's features and technology from live television where information is constantly changing during the course of a transmission and needs to be reflected in up-to-date graphs, charts and similar. The election results with all of the pie charts changing as votes come in is typical of this technology.
3DLive uses the graphics power to provide a complete solution out of one box. It is resolution independent, so systems can be added together to create enormous resolution outputs, feeding many types of displays. As 3DLive is based around a three dimensional virtual environment, Joys designers can create backgrounds and content that are themselves 3D. So for instance a clients logo can be built in a 3D design programme and imported into 3DLive. Environments can be added to look shiny, metallic, glass, colour, matt, whatever is needed. They can then be moved around the screen, and because of the 3D environment, they will have proper perspective, helping create a realistic look. If one doesn't have the budget to build specific models, there are many 3D libraries available offering free 3D models. So instead of using a mere 2D picture of a building, an award trophy, or a piece of merchandise to illustrate a "slide", beautifully rendered 3D animated versions can be used. This real-time capability means that all kinds of things that were previously impossible for live shows and presentations can now be utilised.
Peter Joy, Managing Director of Joys says “When PowerPoint appeared on the market many years ago, there was a transition away from slides to electronic creation and delivery. This started quite simply with electronic text slides and simple charts. Ever since then, producers and designers have been pushing harder and harder wanting features that some packages are just not capable of delivering. Often, this is because the core of the programme has not been designed to take advantage of the power that is locked up inside the GPU of todays generation of display cards. We are now seeing just what is capable of this type of processor with the stunning graphics in the new Playstation and Nintendo games machines, and although clients are not looking at gaming as the next presentation technology, would like to make use of the graphics power in the live presentation market. We have really raised the bar with 3DLive. Its not a piece of software or hardware that you can go and buy off the shelf. We have taken the "Render Engine" and bolted on a few extras to make it workable for us, the way we want to work. In having done so, we can provide a complete solution from concept and design, implementation, and final delivery on the day.”
3Dlive has some very sophisticated labour saving, and hence money saving features. On award shows especially, there may be many awards all having a similar structure. The sequence is usually the same - the award name, the sponsor, the nominations in order, and finally the winner in that category. Repeat until end of awards!
Another requirement on the M&IT show was the facility to view the evening"s fundraising running total live as it progressed. This was displayed at frequent intervals as animated 3D text, once again obtaining it's figures from a spreadsheet sitting on another computer that could be easily amended without having to stop the show or take the graphics off of screen. “And for those people who find it hard to give up their PowerPoint, we can open a window within 3DLive and take a live feed from a computer running PowerPoint. This can be mapped onto 3D Objects and is a great way of maintaining backwards compatibility. All content can be cloned many times within the system without slowing down at all, and we can save on external switching and distribution amplifiers.” continues Peter Joy.
3DLive was developed after Joy"s realised that although PowerPoint dominated the market for presentations, when it came to ultra-widescreen, there were just too many technical restrictions when needing an output approaching 4,000 x 1,000 pixels in size. Peter Joy explains “PowerPoint is great when you just want a single output at SXGA resolution, but as you go higher it starts to slowdown, the mixes and animations are not smooth, and embedded movies struggle to play with any quality.
Designers want more and more - moving backgrounds, animated "idents" in the corner of the screen, soft-edge display of movies and media. They often have to turn to a number of separate solutions to try and achieve this:- moving backgrounds from a looped tape or computer. Powerpoint with Chromakey technology, matrix switchers and other equipment to help composite everything and get it to the screen. Sometimes this may involve many boxes of equipment that a single 3DLive system could easily replace, saving budget that could be redeployed into better creative design.
For the past five years Joys have been at the forefront of widescreen edge blended technology with their ScreenMaster, Montage, and Spyder screen control systems. In 2005 they added several Digital Lightning 35HD 18,000 lumen projectors to their fleet and in recent weeks have placed an order for new Christie HD 8,000, 12,000 and 18,000 lumen projectors along with a range of lenses from the very wide angle 0.67:1 to the long throw 4.5:1.
“Not everyone has the budget for 4 x 16,000 lumen projectors on 30 metre wide screens or in fact have the requirement for a screen that size. We feel that the new Christie HD-8k and other models, give us a solution across the whole budget range” says Peter Joy.
“Using this solution enables clients to retain the existing high standards and unbeatable image quality of high budget shows, and yet scale the screen size and budget down to appropriate proportions. The use of the new HD native 16:9 ratio projectors allow for high quality screen sizes, using fewer projectors. Older SXGA projectors have a horizontal resolution of 1280 pixels. This would give a resolution of 3,584 pixels allowing for 3 projectors with 2 blends of 128 pixels each. With HD projectors, each with a native horizontal resolution of 1920 pixels, 2 projectors would give 3,712 pixels with a single blend and an overall higher horizontal resolution.
Although HD projectors are more expensive to rent, because there are fewer of them needed to achieve the same result, there are actually savings of about 25%! Higher quality, lower cost, a win-win situation! When you then look at adding back up projectors, the cost savings continue - 4 projectors versus 6 projectors.”
The M&IT awards show used the following...
4 x Lightning 35HD projectors (18,000 lumens each) 2 Main, 2 backup
1 x screen measuring 17m x 5m
1 x 3DLive system with two 1920 x 1080 DVI outputs
2 x Spyder 344 screen controllers with optical DVI feeds
1 x PPU feed for live camerasIf producers are looking for something quite different, maybe 3DLive is the next "big thing". For further information about Joys, Spyder, 3DLive, see www.joys.com or contact Peter Joy at peter@joys.com
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Each month we will give you a short profile of some of our freelance members, this will help any bookers to locate new freelancers and vice versa. Its our little way of spreading the love!
Justine catterall is a Creative Producer / Production Manager of Events & Video, she has 19 years experience and has produced events from pop/rock concerts for Robbie Williams (pictured left) and Oasis to corporate events for the likes of Mercedes Car Group, Christian Dior and RBS.
Justine prides herself in bringing fun and enthusiasm to any project, and loves working within a team. Justines long experience across all areas of the industry both corporate and rock and roll means that she has a good understanding of all areas of production. You will find justine by clicking "search freelancers" from your AV Booker homepage, then select production and add the producer skill. Justine is London based but will travel the globe to produce live events and video shoots.
Clive Smith is a freelance graphic designer who has had over 20 years experience in the industry, starting with 35mm in both studio photography and rostrum camera. He has extensive knowledge of all the leading Software including: PowerPoint, Keynote, Photoshop, Illustrator, Corel Draw, After FX, Flash and creating shows/programmes for multi screen shows using Barco Encore system.
Clive has worked on events for numerous clients including: Renault Safety for Crown Business Comms, CSO, Chief Scientific Office (Government Health Dept) & DWP (Department of Work & Pensions) for Oxygen Marketing - Wide screen Encore format, ICSC for Fisher Productions, Interbrew/InBev for Stoneapple Productions, Abbot Pharmaceuticals for Stoneapple Productions and Vodafone for UKS&V.
When asked what clive brings to an event he said "Unfortunately I am one of those people who have a conscience and will do what it takes to make sure the job gets done. I am very confident of being left with clients and present myself well. I will help out with other areas that do not involve graphics if it means making sure that the event runs properly. Its the satisfaction of seeing your work on the big screen that gives me a buzz and how you might be able to improve/adapt on the next show. I'm also looking to get more involved with Apple's Keynote now that I've used it. There's definitely a place for it along with the rest of the stuff I do."
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