Sky Sports & SPS at The Media Production & Technology Show 2022

Last week (11th & 12th), Sky Production Services' Director of Post Production, Adam Downey, spoke at The Media Production & Technology Show 2022, the UK's largest broadcast show and a must-attend event for both the media and broadcasting industries.

Kicking off Sky Sports & SPS' participation on Wednesday, Adam took part in a panel, titled 'State of the Nation: Post Production', alongside David Barrett (Head of Post Production - Plimsoll Productions) and Cara Kotschy (Managing Director - Residence Pictures), where they discussed the changing face of post production, the squeeze on budgets from clients and the changes brought about by remote working over the last 2 years.

Discussing the transition to hybrid working and its benefits for the work-life balance of staff, Adam said: "The main benefit is to offer the choice of where a production wishes to edit. Whether this is on location, at home, in the production office or at our site. Wherever it best suits the production and the talent they wish to work with. This allows us to concentrate space towards high end finishing services, however, we still require certain work to happen on site where we feel the risk to delivery is high."

Shifting to whether clients understand and appreciate the value of post production service, in terms of cost, technical breadth, resilience and creativity, he reflected: "At Sky, we have always led the way on technology and currently we do a huge amount of work in UHD, HDR and Dolby Atmos for example, and have been working in these formats for a number of years. But in general, competition is good for the industry. Our job is simply to help a production to deliver the very best product using all the tools, skills and talent at our disposal. I would say though that the growth of content by streamers alongside Sky has allowed us to raise standards and therefore get the respect back into post production as a quality service."

In addition to Adam's involvement in the 2-day event, Sky Sports' Director of Production, Phil Marshall, Head of Production, Bridget Bremner and Operational Delivery Lead, Jennifer Mihalovic (pictured above), also participated in sessions titled 'How Sports Broadcasting is Driving Sustainable Change Through Tech', 'State of the Nation: Production' and 'Celebrating Women in Media' respectively.