The Best Of British TV

Simon Hall, Senior Trainer At Soho Editors, Discusses British Broadcasting
Late one night, on a trip to Prague, I was surfing through late night Czech TV attempting to settle the one too many pints of fine beer, when it suddenly occurred to me that all
the programmes I was stumbling across were dubbed into Czech very well.
Nonetheless they were all dubbed programmes from US television and not one channel, other than the news, had any locally made television. It may have been due to the late hour and that most Czech’s were our celebrating their win over Poland in Euro 2012, but it got me thinking about British broadcasting and, when we put our minds to it, just how good we are at producing some truly great television.
The BBC, often derided by the tabloid press, can produce some of the most admired television. It’s natural history output for example is, in the writers humble opinion at least, head and shoulders above the rest of the world. Popular BBC shows such as The Office and Top Gear have spawned spin off series in the States, something that is not easy to do, as American television audiences are extremely fickle.
Soho Editors have been involved in setting up several T.V. stations in emerging markets such as the UAE, and with most the brief is that that they wanted their station modeled on the BBC. New news stations want to look like BBC News not CNN or Fox. The quality is not limited to the BBC either. Love them or hate them Simon Cowell’s “X Factor” and “Britain’s Got Talent” have produced a huge number of spin offs around the world.
So why is Britain good at producing quality TV? The answer, I established on the Prague
sofa, was down to the talent. Being an editor I would say that, but I think the U.K. has some
of the best talent in the world. And I’m not just talking presenters or personalities here,
I’m talking producers, writers, cameramen, editors, colour graders, all the guys in behind
the camera that give British programmes that quality edge.
Taking post production as an example, you need look no further than Soho to still see it is
one of the world’s leading post production hubs. People are still happy to fly into London
and see their film being finished rather than do it locally. Soho still has that reputation.
There was a danger that some of the leading talent may be tempted away by emerging
countries such as India and Dubai, throwing big money at high end post operators, but
quality operators remain. Now with the possibility of tax breaks for TV production as
well as the ones already in place for film and the UK industry could go from strength to
strength.
The talent also remains in Soho because they can always stay current with the systems they
are using or interested in learning. Soho Editors Training has always endeavored to
offer the latest training on a wide range of products. Obviously training can be offered
on Apple and Adobe systems, but nowhere in Europe would you find an Authorised Training
Centre for Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve. The new Blackmagic Design software is becoming recognised as one of the best colour grading packages in the industry, and with it’s
competitive pricing is becoming adopted by more and more companies. The onlyplace you can get Blackmagic certified training is in Soho. This kind of endorsement, as well as ones from the
aforementioned Apple and Adobe along with ones from Autodesk and Avid and Soho Editors
Training is the only European training centre where you can get all your post production
training. From people who actually work in the industry.
So in my Czech beer half slumber, I concluded that the reason we Brits produce good TV is
that we still have very high standards for the work we put out, and we want to maintain that level of quality in the future and that’s why we’re still one of the world’s best. As a training centre Soho Editors wants to follow that same ethos. Pity we can’t do beer like Czech’s mind.
See www.4rfv.co.uk/rfvonline