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David Kearnes |
BROKEN ARROW, OKLA.—Kodiak Mobile
Television is a mobile production company
that Paul Bronsteader and I started in 2011,
four years after we launched our sister company,
Kodiak Production Group. Since then,
we’ve produced numerous posted and live
events across the country.
A TRUCK OF OUR OWN
After a few years of contracting and using
other trucks, we realized that building our
own mobile unit—one that could support
both live productions and edited programming—
could help us streamline operations
and reduce overhead. Last December, we
rolled out our first production truck, Grizz
HD, which is now on the road covering college
and NBA basketball, NCAA Gymnastics,
Grand Prix swimming and MMA projects.
The truck is equipped with all of the
latest production and editing equipment,
with a lot of AJA gear, including FS2 frame
synchronizers, Ki Pros, Ki Pro Racks, a range
of miniconverters, as well as Io XT and TTAP
Thunderbolt edit interfaces connected
to a Mac edit system running Apple Final
Cut Pro and Avid software. AJA gear was an
affordable and reliable choice for the truck
from the start. We’d used it in some demanding
situations in the past, and the performance
was always spectacular.
We’re particularly pleased with the FS2
frame syncs, as they offer dual-channel conversion
capabilities and built-in fiber I/O.
Also, they’re compact and lightweight, something
you look for when constructing a mobile
production truck—the lighter the truck,
the better the gas mileage, and the money
saved on fuel adds up to savings for our clients.
The FS2s also handle embedded audio
and include all of the other inputs and outputs
you could need, which gives us the flexibility
to adapt to each client’s environment.
Over time, we’ve seen more and more
fiberoptic connectivity being used in remote
productions. This is not just in the
camera path, but also fiber that’s used to
connect with pre-wired facilities and other
trucks that are on-site. Having two affordable
and compact frame synchronizers
with fiber connectivity in 1RU at half the
cost of other similar standalone fiber solutions
is really a big bonus for us.
NO CLOSED-CAPTIONING WORRIES
In addition, we’ve found that the FS2
frame syncs work great with closed-captioning,
which will be an important consideration
for our clients as the 21st Century
Communications Act is enforced. The frame
syncs are powerful and easy to use, and
their quality is outstanding. We’ve also observed
that our freelancers are familiar with
the units, as they’re becoming the de facto
standard in mobile production trucks.
Our experience during the past five years
of production work has been that if AJA
makes a product for a specific application,
we will use that product over anything else
out there. We’ve found that the company not
only has outstanding service and tech support
both before and after the sale, but their
products just keep on working. The FS2
frame synchronizers not only save us significant
space and money, but they will allow us
to work more efficiently.
David is an Emmy-award winning editor,
director, video engineer and business
owner with more than 31 years of broadcast
and post production experience. He
may be contacted at david@kodiakmobile.tv.
For additional information, contact AJA
at 530-274-2048 or visit www.aja.com.