Moon walking is a piece of cake

Leading lights from the Royal Television Society’s (RTS) North East and the Border Centre found themselves virtually walking on the moon when they visited our new digital TV and sound studio, complete with sophisticated visual special effects.

Situated in the new Phoenix Building, home to the University’s Institute of Digital Innovation, the state-of-the-art broadcast quality surround sound and high-definition video production facilities are among the best in the north of England.

And the RTS big wigs were certainly impressed, especially after being invited to take centre stage in the studio’s green screen set for an out of this world experience.

For while they appeared to have their feet firmly based on ground Earth, the special effects video recording facilities transported them on to the surface of the moon.

State-of-the-art video production facilities Tony Edwards, a producer and director with a string of broadcasting credits and hon secretary of the RTS Centre, said: ‘It is really earth-shattering what the University of Teesside has developed here and the RTS is proud to be associated with this venture. This is as good as anything I have seen in the region and means students and independent film makers here in North East England have unique sound and vision facilities on their doorstep.’

Among the facilities is a £75,000 top-class high definition track-based motion control camera system, which is capable of creating amazing visual effects - from simple crowd duplications to highly detailed complex artificial live action based sequences.

‘The equipment is regularly used on many major movies to create effects including the Golden Compass, Harry Potter and many more and ours is one of the only systems of its type in UK education,’ said Simon Mckeown, Reader in Computer Animation and Post Production at the University.

Elite of educational establishments   But that’s not all for the studio, which is part of the University’s highly-rated School of Computing, doubles up as a sound studio and includes a state-of-the-art mixing desk called a ICON D-Control. This has been created by Digidesign, the leading name in digital sound technology and catapults Teesside into the elite of educational establishments as it provides the most advanced hi-tech recording and editing systems available. ‘Teesside is unique in being the only higher education establishment in England to have an ICON D-Control,’ according to Jay Chapman, Principal Lecturer in Digital Music.

‘The makers of the Bill and East Enders and many feature films regularly use the D-Control desk in their productions,’ he says, explaining the £100,000 system is augmented with Apple Mac computers and Digidesign’s Pro Tools software, which allows sound engineers and students to record, manipulate and process sound on a computer. In addition, the system comes with a wide-range of processing units and plug-ins to ensure the creation of the most pristine and cutting-edge audio possible today.

A wonderful studio It was installed by Mediaspec, one of the UK’s leading professional audio specialists, whose clients also include leading musicians and recording studios.

Eric Joseph, Managing Director of Mediaspec, joined the RTS moon walk and said afterwards: ‘Teesside has created a wonderful studio that will be the envy of educational establishments up and down the land and we’re proud to have been involved in establishing such a state-of-the-art studio. We’re sure that students and others using the studio will benefit from having the leading technology in the world right at their fingertips.’

Other key players in providing and installing the new facilities included f451 and AVC Electronics.

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