First major order for Lightworks under new ownership

Lightworks has announced its first major order since the company's acquisition by Gee Broadcast Systems Ltd in May.
Leading dry hire facilities house Coach House Studios has placed an order for ten Lightworks touch NLE systems, to be supplied over the next few months.
Coach House Managing Director John Walbeoffe commented: "We've bought a number of Lightworks systems over the years and, because they have such a loyal following among editors, wanted to continue using them. Gee Broadcast's recent acquisition of Lightworks gave us the necessary confidence in the company's future to make that decision. We're now looking forward to replacing our Lightworks 'fleet' with equivalent numbers of the new touch systems, instead of just writing it off, so that we become known as the principal Lightworks hire facility in London."
Coach House Studios tends to specialise in television drama, but does handle feature films and documentaries as well. The company installs and supports edit suites anywhere in Europe - such as Prague, for ‘Dr. Zhivago’ - and although systems can be set up in proximity to a studio, they are as likely to be on location - such as for the recent endurance television stunt by magician David Blaine - or ordinary offices. Once filming is complete, systems are usually taken from location back to the production company's offices, or sometimes into the Coach House itself, which is equipped with ten edit suites.
Rather than keep field systems boxed up and ready, the company prefers to assign a system that is already in use and therefore fully 'burnt-in', to ensure that it will work without problems when it is shipped.
Like Walbeoffe himself, a lot of his company's clients are ex-BBC and as the Corporation was a prominent buyer of the original Lightworks systems, many former BBC editors are trained and experienced on Lightworks. The Coach House's close proximity to BBC Television Centre makes it a very convenient facility for editors working on BBC projects.
Walbeoffe said: "We've got about six ex-BBC editors working here at the moment and although they were always very loyal to Lightworks, they really had no choice but to move to systems from other manufacturers, because Lightworks systems had gradually lost their technological edge. I think they will be more than pleased to be able to return to Lightworks, once they see that the new Touch systems are certainly as good as, or actually better than, the competition."
With one of the new Lightworks systems already working on a prestigious but as-yet-undisclosed external project and another assigned to internal use, Walbeoffe anticipates that it will not be long before Lightworks devotees are beating a path to his door and he can call off the next allocation from his order.
(GB)