FOX VIDEO Productions
FOX VIDEO
Productions was started in 1989 by Dave and Sue Farrants who at the
time were running a commercial photography business. In our spare time
we "rehabilitated" orphan fox cubs back into the wild, having taken
many still photos of these cubs we thought that video would make a good
record of our successes and our first video camera was purchased. This
Panasonic MS1 was the best that could be bought in the amateur/semi
pro market at the time with many videographers using it for commercial
work and so FOX VIDEO Productions was born, (you can also see where
the name came
from!), Within a short space of time we found the limitations of the
camera and decided to upgrade to a "3 chip" Panasonic F350 with 2 Panasonic
7500 SVHS edit decks and an edit controller. Still not satisfied with
quality, we further upgraded to the MII format (Panasonic's equivilent
to Betacam SP). This now gave us the quality we were looking for, however
the investment cost for the edit suite could not be justified and in
answer to this we decided to offer our suite out to other video producers
shooting on SVHS or Hi8 and then editing up to an MII master in our
suite. This became very successful and we soon became well known as
an alternative to the more expensive London facility houses. In 1995,
and in an effort to increase quality yet again, we investigated the
possibility of replacing our analogue suite with the, then little known,
non-linear edit suite called Media 100 as well as mastering to
Beta SP. After extensive testing we decided to buy and in the summer
of '95 we were offering one of the first NLE suites outside London to
our facility clients.We stayed with Media 100 till early 2000 when we
switched to the Apple Final Cut Pro system
and more information can be found on our Post
Production page.
Dave Farrants has worked as operator and editor on MEDIA 100 since the system was installed by Fox Video Productions in 1994/5. He was one of the most experienced MEDIA 100 operators in the UK and has worked on numerous projects for clients from all over the UK. He was also in demand for MEDIA 100 training by clients in the UK and from as far afield as Brunei and Malaya. Dave has also achieved the award of Diploma with the APV.
