Broadcasting

DMA Media’s production arm, Vivid White Productions, has secured a commission for a new English language learning format for the BBC. ‘Word on the Street ‘ will be made by Vivid White in  partnership with the British Council.

The shows will use drama and animation to bring English learning to life. Unlike many of its predecessors – this series is trying to show an alternative ‘cooler’ view of life in the UK, not just red buses and beefeaters.

Vivid White is co-producing the show with the BBC, directing all the drama and studio segments and providing camera crews and facilities. Our in-house graphics team are also providing branding and animations for the series.

“The emphasis of this series is on making English language learning look less like a classroom and more like a regular TV programme” says Vivid White’s Development Executive Wesley Dodd,  “This programme  should appeal to the key 16 – 25 age group  – many of whom are desperate for the chance to learn English”.

Wesley developed the pilot in early 2009 and helped secure co-production funding. He will be the Executive Producer of the programme for Vivid White Productions.

Filming begins in June 2010 and the series is due for TX in late 2010.

A unique video archive which contains unseen footage of the foundation and development of Abu Dhabi and the UAE is being restored and digitised by DMA Media.

More than 30,000 pieces of film and video in Abu Dhabi Media Company’s vaults will be preserved for future generations. Some of the footage is in danger of degrading completely and DMA’s CEO Rob Beynon says “the restoration comes just in time to save a region’s heritage – it is very significant that ADMC is taking this important step now, while the archive is still mainly in reasonable quality.”

The project includes the restoration and preservation of the Sheikh Zayed Archive, which goes back to before the formation of the UAE.

DMA has started working on cataloguing, restoring and digitising the material. The archive is in several formats, each posing their own problems. Most of the material is 16mm and 35mm safety film but there are also 30 year-old items on 2” Quad video tape. This is particularly difficult to restore as the foam used to protect video reels frequently breaks down and coats the tape. Some of the material can only be played once before it degrades completely. To ensure the best possible results, DMA is bringing international experts to the UAE and is training staff in working with the damaged and unstable media.

Ahmed Al Menhali, deputy director of broadcast technology at ADMC, commented on this project saying: “We have thousands of pieces of footage that document our heritage and key events in the history of the UAE. We are lucky to have found the right expertise together with the right tools to save the endangered data which represents our heritage and reflects our history.”

The preservation of national archives is a problem across the region, according to Chris O’Hearn, DMA’s Middle East Projects Director. “Several countries around the region have huge stores of rare and historical footage archived using traditional media facing the risk of oxidizing and becoming of no value. Losing this footage would be a sad loss. It’s highly specialised work which DMA is uniquely qualified to carry out – and now is the time to carry it out, before it’s too late.”

Menhali said: “With DMA’s knowledge, state-of-the-art technology and expertise, we are sure that we will be able to restore and digitise all of our archives which will enable us to use them in the future as material for things like documentaries or TV programs.”

The film will be inspected, cleaned and physically repaired before being scanned and digitally restored. Images will be kept on XDCam disks and LTO data tapes – both digital formats while any 35mm films will be kept in HD, and are to be meta-tagged for easy retrieval.

“It’s a huge project, but as I said, it’s timely,” said O’Hearn. “It’s also perhaps a wake-up call for other national archives in the region – the time to act on preserving these important documents is actually now.”

DMA CEO Rob Beynon interviewed in Communicate - click to read the article in full.

According to Nielsen’s latest research, time spent on social networking sites grew 82% last year. DMA has first-hand experience of how this boom in social media can enhance and drive television news coverage.

DMA’s CEO, Rob Beynon,  led the team that helped the BBC launch BBC Persian TV in January 2009. He was acting head of the channel for its remarkable first 6 months on air. After the disputed elections in June 2009, Persian TV maintained a valuable link between the Iranian people and the outside world by harnessing the power of social media and user-generated photographs and video.

This month, Rob spoke to leading corporate communications magazine ‘Communicate’ to explain how DMA helped the BBC filter and contextualise user-generated content and build a large and loyal audience in Iran.

You can view a PDF of the full ‘Communicate’ article by clicking on the thumbnail above. You will need Adobe Reader to open the file.

A BBC Persian TV documentary executive produced by DMA’s Patrick Hubbard has won the 2009 AIB Media Excellence Award for clearest coverage of a single news event.

“The Election that Shook Iran”  was broadcast in Farsi on BBC Persian TV and in English on BBC World. It covered the most turbulent time in Iran’s recent history – the period leading up to June’s disputed presidential elections and the violence that followed.

Patrick Hubbard oversaw the entire production, working with an enthusiastic team on a fast-moving story to create an award-winning programme in less than seven days.

Click here for the full story of DMA’s involvement with BBC Persian TV.

A programme that DMA Media helped produce for BBC Persian TV has been shortlisted for an award for “Best TV current affairs documentary” by the Association of International Broadcasters.

‘The Election That Shook Iran’ documented the most turbulent period in Iran’s recent history – the period leading up to June’s disputed elections and the violence that followed. The half hour programme was broadcast in Farsi on BBC Persian TV and in English on BBC World, and it made extensive use of ‘user-generated’ videos sent directly to the channel from eyewitnesses in Iran.

The Executive Producer of the programme was DMA Media’s Senior Consultant, Patrick Hubbard, it was presented by BBC Persian’s Sima Alinejad. It was commissioned by Rob Beynon, DMA Media’s CEO who was then Acting Head of Persian TV. Click here for the full story of DMA’s involvement with BBC Persian TV.

BBC Persian TV has also been shortlisted by the AIB in two other categories for the documentary ‘Taste of Iran’ and for its marketing campaign ‘Stories That Connect Lives’.

DMA Media is setting up offices in the newly opened media zone in Abu Dhabi, twofour54. Its UAE subsidiary, DMA Middle East, will operate from there and is expecting a very busy year.

General Manager Chris O’Hearn said ‘the whole Gulf region is bursting with energy and needs world class media expertise. We’re in a good position to help to develop local talent in the region, and that’s very much our strategy.’ Chris added: ‘We believe the key to developing media is a healthy freelance market in the region, and twofour54 is working to make the UAE visa process much easier. There’s no shortage of good talent out there.’

Click here for Chris’ comments on the freelance visa situation in The National (the UAE’s leading English language newspaper).

DMA were the media partners for twofour54’s Intaj studios and production facilities, and have worked with the project since the very start. Now DMA is expanding its operations in the GCC and providing support and outsourced content services to broadcasters and companies throughout the Middle East.

DMA Media has delivered an initial batch of films for the UK Government’s Change4life campaign. This is DMA’s first experience working inside the Change4life brand and the results have been highly successful.

The films were commissioned by Portsmouth Primary Care Trust and Portsmouth Football Club. They aim to help young families make the link between a healthy, active lifestyle and happy family memories. DMA’s producer Michelle Maynard built the films around a case-study family and the result is a series of engaging, accessible pieces that deliver precise messages. In addition to the four films, DMA also produced a series of mute graphic sequences for use in doctors’ surgeries and other quiet environments.

Hannah Byrne from Portsmouth PCT was delighted with the end product and the team’s approach:

“I have heard nothing but really positive feedback from my colleagues and the public … they produced a really professional piece of work, meeting all our needs and exceeded our expectations.”

DMA’s CEO Rob Beynon says this has been a very exciting project for DMA’s video production unit:

“DMA has built up a fantastic relationship with the clients and worked hard to convey the key messages in engaging and inspirational videos. By spending time sourcing an excellent case-study family we were able to bring the piece to life and make it work for the target audience.”

 DMA’s video production department specialises in producing accurate, engaging films that deliver key messages to targeted audiences. In addition to Portsmouth PCT, our clients include Crossrail, Honda and Vodafone.

NOTES:
The UK Government’s Change4life campaign is backed by £275 million of public money and aims to encourage people to “eat well and move more”. If you’d like DMA to bring flexible, creative and cost-effective video to your business, don’t hesitate to contact Michelle Maynard on +44 (0) 20 7432 2812 or Nat Low on +44 (0) 20 7432 2813.

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DMA Media supported the BBC World Service with the highly successful launch of Persian Television earlier this month.

The channel broadcasts news, current affairs and features programmes to more than 100 million Farsi speakers in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and other parts of the world.

DMA’s Rob Beynon was the Editorial Launch Director and nursed the project over a two-year period from its inception to its launch. Patrick Hubbard worked alongside him assisting with editorial and technical aspects of the channel.

The DMA team advised on everything from the planning and design of broadcast systems and studios, to recruitment of staff and programme line-ups.

Its modern, stylish look and authoritative content was greeted with an overwhelmingly positive reaction from Iranian viewers.

Abu Dhabi Media Company is building on the success of their English language newspaper. With help from DMA Media, Abu Dhabi TV has launched a daily TV news show based inside The National’s newsroom.

The ground-breaking programme covers all the day’s news and gives a preview of the following morning’s headlines. Presenter Crispin Thorold interviews the newspaper’s correspondents and a team of video journalists produce quick-turnaround packages.

The end result is a polished news magazine that combines quality journalism and stylish production.

The first edition hit the air on Sunday January 18, on time and on budget. The show was very well received DMA has been integral to the launch from inception to delivery.

We devised the original concept, delivered early pilots and helped ADTV find the right staff. Finally, we were on the ground to assist with the launch itself.

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DMA Media has been exploring the future of video news at NewsXchange 2008. At the conference in Valencia, DMA Media hosted a much-anticipated session that brought together entrepreneurs, analysts and regulators each with their own take on the future.

The session, called Hype, hope and headaches: making and selling digital news, generated plenty of debate. and also, perhaps, a clearer vision for the next ten years. The video above explains some of the key issues.

It used to be so simple: a single format, a small number of competitors and a straightforward relationship with the audience. The session heard that simplicity is rapidly evaporating. Television news operators now face a fragmenting audience, multiple distribution platforms and an increasing number of competitors. There are opportunities and there is optimism but there are also plenty of problems and uncertainties.

Session panellists included:

• Madhav Chinnappa; Head of Business Development, BBC Journalism;
• Beat Knecht, President & CEO, Zattoo;
• Jeff Jarvis, Professor of Journalism, City University of New York;
• Stewart Purvis, Partner, Content and Standards, OFCOM;
• Rob Beynon, CEO, DMA Media;
• Moderator: Robert Freeman, BBC Click

DMA’s Nat Low has produced two short films to be played at NewsXchange; the first questions how news companies will make money in the new digital news landscape and the second profiles an innovative video news service that has benefitted from cheap digital technology.