EPIC To Become One Of Europe's Most Advanced HD TV Studio Centres

EPIC, the East of England Production Innovation Centre at Norwich, is to set to become one of the UK's most advanced HD production centres, thanks to £1.5 million funding from the East of England Development Agency.
A Creative Industries Enterprise Hub, set up to give support and function as a resource to the content creation sector, EPIC has three TV studios, one a large drama/LE studio of over 6,000 sq feet, and two smaller studios of around a thousand square feet, one of them equipped with a brand new Orad SmartSet Virtual Studio system,
All are available for hire by producers or broadcasters.
As well as being a commercial production centre, EPIC works with education and training providers to bring on the creative talents of the 21st Century.
Norwich School of Art and Design run film and video foundation and honours degree courses from the building, which also houses a number of production, communications and graphics companies.
Norfolk County Council owns the centre.
The funding will enable upgrading of all three studios. The main studio will have six Sony HDC 1500 fibre-optic camera channels with a selection of Canon HD box and hand-held lenses.
The production gallery will be totally re-equipped with a new HD monitor stack and a GVG Kayak 3ME HD mixer, coupled with a K2 server allowing instant replay of recorded clips, slo-mos etc.
The sound gallery will be re-equipped with a new Calrec Omega desk, enabling the studio for live surround sound production.
There will also be a new and flexible Telex communications system throughout the building and HD gallery graphics.
The other studios will have smaller Kayak mixers and are already equipped with HD/SD cameras from JVC.
All three studios will also be able to record to both HD tape and the 48 terra-byte SAN server system already installed in the building, and which serves sixty seats of Apple Final Cut Studio editing software, some of them HD suites for commercial as well as training use.
The facility will be equipped for both broadcast production and live internet streaming. There are also two Avid HD/SD edit suites and an audio dubbing theatre.
Mark Wells, Centre Director, said: "This is great news for us. We already had one of the best centres in the UK for education, training and post-production.
"This upgrade will place us in the first rank of major studio facilities across Europe. There's not doubt HD is the essential product format for content intended to have more than a 'here today, gone tomorrow' shelf life.
"Anybody making drama, sitcom or music productions - as well as many game shows - needs to know that their product will be as saleable tomorrow as it is today, and that it will be marketable across the globe. That can be ensured only by producing in HD."
Further information is available at: www.epic-tv.org.
(KMcA/JM)