Thomson-owned facility Technicolor is spending close to£1m on building a second high-def Spirit telecine suite to cope with a high demand for HD drama and features, writes Rick Dacey.
Thomson-owned facility Technicolor is spending close to £1m on building a second high-def Spirit telecine suite to cope with a high demand for HD drama and features, writes Rick Dacey.

The west London-based company has been renting a Spirit for a number of months but is due to take receipt of a new DataCine machine in the next few weeks, which will be put into a new purpose-built suite. After spending close to £1.5m at the end of 2002 on its first Spirit and its high-def machine room, creative services manager Simon Wilkinson feels that the purchase is a wise decision. "We now know how much work we're capable of doing and there's definitely enough HD work around for a second permanent suite," he said.

Technicolor has recently worked on The Brief for Carlton and hi-def projects such as the feature films Calendar Girls and Johnny English.

Wilkinson estimates that 70-80% of the daytime bookings going through the company are currently HD, which is a much higher figure than the 65% that he believed he'd see when Broadcast spoke to him at the end of 2002 (Broadcast, 20.12.02).

Technicolor has also set up a 100Mb data transfer link with Sohonet to transport content to Soho, which will set it back approximately £30,000 for initial installation and its first year's rental.

Wilkinson, previously of 4MC and TWI, said: "Getting this pipe is another cog in the machine to getting Digital Intermediate projects. It's a strategic move for us."

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