The Machine Room Continues its Empire Building

Top London facility wins prestigious RTS Craft Award for its work on the British Empire in Colour

The Machine Room has once again underlined its technical and creative pedigree by taking home one of the top honours at the 2003 Royal Television Society’s Craft and Design Awards. At the gala event held at Grosvenor House on November 17th 2003, The Machine Room-restored TWI production, The British Empire in Colour, took the ’Best Picture Enhancement Award’. The award went to The Machine Room’s telecine operator Gerry Gedge, TWIs film editor Stephen Moore and freelance DS editor Phil Moss.

Already a winner of the Indies 2003 Best Archive Award earlier this year, the three part television series produced by TWI’s Lucy Carter and Stewart Binns, charts the history of the end of the British Empire.

The Machine Room was up against stiff competition from the BBC Bristol series Monsters we Met and Darwin’s Daughter, the co-production between BBC Natural History, Discovery and Animal Planet. According to the judges, The British Empire in Colour won because "the complex, painstaking work to recover colour pictures from a variety of historic source material was impressive and in some instances astounding."

Footage dating back to 1906 came in from archives and private sources around the world - from the Imperial War Museum to a previously undiscovered film found at the Russian state archive by researcher Adrian Wood. Restoration of the precious film was realised in The Machine Room’s Film Treatment Centre, a unique facility for restoring and treating damaged or old film. After cleaning up hours of footage, The Machine Room’s grading team carried out the wet-gate telecine transfer on its Ursa Diamond. Gerry Gedge completed the process by carrying out a DCP (digital colour processing) re-grade of each master programme.

About The Machine Room

The Machine Room has over 12 years’ experience of providing professional services to the film, television and video markets. It offers clients - including the BFI, IWM, TWI, Path, Paramount, Shed, MGM, HIT Entertainment, MTV and the BBC - highly experienced operators with cutting edge technology to provide non-linear editing facilities, HD post-production, DVD authoring and encoding and film mastering and treatment services.

Credits Project:

The British Empire in Colour

Broadcaster: ITV1

Production company: TWI/Carlton

Series producer: Lucy Carter

Producer: Stewart Binns

Executive producers: Alastair Waddington Polly Bide

TWI film editor: Stephen Moore

Freelance DS editor: Phil Moss

Post Production: The Machine Room The Machine Room

telecine operator: Gerry Gedge

For further information, images or to arrange interviews please contact:

Rob Ettridge at Red Lorry Yellow Lorry
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7434 2950 Email: [email protected]