Huw Stephens Presents...

Radio 1 DJ Huw Stephens has a well established reputation of finding new musical talent and regularly showcases that talent at a night at The Social of Oxford Street in London. Cloudbass approached Huw to see if he would be interested in putting that showcase on TV and the result is Huw Stephens Presents...

Filmed one night in 2007, the night featured four bands, youngsters Penciltoes - a pop heavy collection of enthusiasm with infectious tunes and an excellent live presence. They were followed by RizMC with political prose backed up by haunting strings. Then came PixelH8 with his collections of Gameboys and Acorn Electrons, all producing the kind of simplistic noises once heard in the 80's, but with a modern dance sensibility. Up last was Gideon Conn with his own brand of funky laid back vibes and irreverent humour.

All of the acts performed completely live, each of them showing up much more established artists. This was all captured on the night in front of a live audience.

Not only was the final product new and fresh, but so was the process used to create it. Key to the way Cloudbass approaches everything is its desire to innovate and this production was no different. Normally the truck would produce a 'cut ' of the live cameras which would be recorded to tape. If the cut wanted to be changed then the line cut would have to be ingested into an edit system and then each angle that needed to be replaced would also have to be ingested off a different tape. If there were lots of changes then this process could get quite tiresome.

Instead, Cloudbass recorded each camera straight into an Apple Mac, then used its own technology to create an Edit Decision List from the Vision Mixer, which then allowed a line cut to be recreated in Final Cut. This meant that every single cut could be adjusted immediately, with all iso angles available without ingesting. This sped up prost production time considerably which in turn reduces cost.

The team also used readily available technology to record the music straight into Logic Pro running on a Mac. This software allowed a live mix to be created and then tweaked afterwards so the bands could be made to sound as good as their live performance promised.

Road Holding Society

'In 1965 a crack team of motoring mechanics found themselves wrongly accused of clocking...'

The intro sets the scene for this reality based programme, which draws on the banter and camaraderie found in programmes such as Top Gear. Designed to be accessible to a wide audience, the premise of the show is a group of like minded petrolheads setting of on a real mission as set by the society's supercomputer, Bertha.

In this particular episode the team was set a challenge of making it to a track day in Northern France and back again, all inside of 2 days. With breakdowns and bust ups, the journey of kit and road cars was followed by 2 camera crews, as the team met up in the UK, then headed over to their accommodation, with the every real possibility of not making it in time. Once there they had to make it to a track in Northern France with no apparent access to sat nav and then back to catch a particular ferry.

24 hours of solid footage was brought back from the trip, with additional cameras rigged to the cars to capture the action as the journey progressed. The team also used special mounts and cameras to catch on track action as the cars were put through their paces.

Key to the success of the programme was the extraction of a 'story' from the events which saw the team nearly get thrown off a cross channel ferry! After the initial process of ingest, all footage had to be reviewed before a story could emerge. Certain events may have has more significance on the trip, but that was no good if the actual footage wasn't there to support it. As such the intended story line had to be tweaked as the edit progressed.

This production process taught the team many things about the production of this sort of programme, which is much different in style and process to a programme like Huw Stephens Presents... As such the team are confident of handling such a programme and believe they know how to bring a programme like Road Holding society in on time and on budget.

uk:KitCar

'2 teams, 2 cars, a whole bunch of students, one winner...'

uk:KitCar saw two teams of students working with 2 guys from a kit car manufacturer in the form of two teams that intended to race each other in the 750MC race series. Episode One covered the initial team formation and the beginning of the build process. Designed to attract a broadcaster, this programme didn't make air on its target channel as that channel was already over subscribed with car content in that period.

With this being Cloudbass' first attempt at programme production, much was learnt about the process of producing a reality type show. Whilst trying to achieve its creative aims, the company was also well aware that a programme has to work commercially and one major factor that was a problem with this programme was the open ended nature of the project. If the project ran long then the production would run long, which in turn could push the production over budget. This was something that was later controlled for Road Holding Society and Huw Stephens Presents..., with the choice of event being covered being carefully considered in order to make the programme commercially viable.