British Universities Film & Video Council

moving image and sound, knowledge and access

News Archive for November, 2009

  • Radio Microphones May Be Rendered Useless Post ‘Digital Switchover’

    The vast majority of the UK’s radio microphones will become unusable as part of the ‘digital switchover’ plans according to a new campaign launched in November 2009. The Save our Sound UK (SOS UK) campaign brings together more than 20 organisations from the arts and entertainment sector and is lobbying against Government plans to sell […]

  • BUFVC Handbook 2010

    bufvc-handbook2010-front2
    The 2010 edition of the BUFVC Handbook is now available. As always, this is a book aimed at information specialists, academic service providers, students and teachers. For details on how to order a copy, please visit the publications page.

  • Newsreel Audience Article

    The latest issue (volume 6, issue 2) of Participations , the online journal of audience and reception studies, has an article by Louise Anderson which attempts to tackle the much neglected area of the audience within newsreel research.You can download the article from the Participations website. It draws on Anderson’s oral history work on people’s memories of […]

  • YouTube rolls out automatic captioning

    Google has annouced that automated captioning will be rolled out to YouTube. Only 13 channels will initially use this system which combines speech recognition with manual captioning. YouTube already provides ‘manual’ captioning but the new system will allow for the use of: speech recognition, which will inevitably produce errors although the technology continues to improve […]

  • Reel News: First Indoor Story?

    In December 1921 Gaumont Graphic filmed a 37-second story of delegates at the international disarmament conference held in Washington, D.C. The Company was proud to promote its technical achievement above the political significance of the event with a title which claimed `First Inside Pictures of Washington Conference’ and a summary which read `Inside views, made […]

  • Reel News: Biscuit Town

    Did you know that from 1870 until the 1970s Reading used to be called ‘Biscuit Town’ because of the Huntley & Palmers factory – by 1900 the largest biscuit manufacturer in the world? To see footage of the cookie city and its factory, as seen through the eyes of its royal visitor Prince Edward of […]

  • As You Like It on German Theatre Channel

    Among the German digital theatre channel  ZDF Theaterkanal‘s latest offerings is a full-length video stream of Katharina Thalbach’s imaginative all-female production of As You Like It which premiered at Berlin’s Kostüm und Theater am Kurfürstendamm earlier this year. For more information on previous ZDF Theaterkanal Shakespeare  stage recordings, see our Shakespeare Database.

  • FOCAL Awards 2010

    Submissions are now being requested for the FOCAL International Awards 2010. Have you researched or licensed archive or library stock footage in any type of production premiered in 2009? Was the use of footage images extraordinary, entertaining, enlightening? Have you handled, restored or preserved remarkable archive or stock footage images in 2009? Is there one person worthy […]

  • BBC launches live and on-demand coverage of Parliamentary sessions

    The BBC has launched Democracy Live, an iPlayer-style website that shows live and on-demand coverage of Parliamentary sessions across the UK and of the European Parliament. Each institution is featured in the ‘video wall’ on the home page and has its own section, listing the business being covered each day. The site uses innovative search […]

  • Commercial radio archive online for the first time

    Photo of John Snow
    The LBC/IRN archive makes available some 4,000 hours of radio to UK Higher and Further Education. Explore it here on the BUFVC website.