Tate Media: State of the Art
The tours were also produced at relatively low cost. “We are lucky enough to have funding from Bloomberg for our programme of digital interpretation at Tate Modern”, says Jane Burton, “and so were able to find a bit of money from the research and development budget for these two pilot tours - we’re hoping to introduce a similar tour at Tate Modern next spring. The Klimt tour was produced entirely in-house on a shoestring, and so was the free download version of the Turner Prize tour. For the in-gallery Turner Prize tour, we worked with our usual tour provider Antenna Audio”.
Douglas McFarlane, Digital Production Co-ordinator, at work in the editing suite.
For the tours and podcasts, the team will often visit artists in their studio and interview them on camera, then edit the footage using their suite of Mac Pros and Final Cut Studio. “When Tate Media was first formed we were looking for machines to use in our edit suite, and there wasn’t any other choice”, says McFarlane. “Mac Pros are the best editing machines out there, so it was a no-brainer”. There was also the added benefit of developing those core editing skills with Final Cut Studio. “A couple of us went on courses to begin with, but it was so easy to learn”, he adds.
A big advantage of Final Cut Studio is having a tool like Compressor, which can optimise and output video for a variety of different requirements. “For the Turner Prize we have a DVD playing in the gallery, and then a iPhone version, which is slightly smaller than the downloadable iTunes version because it’s used for wireless streaming. With all the Compressor presets for iPhone and iPod touch, you can batch-process them all at the same time, so it’s very quick”.
When producing video in-house, however, having a back-up strategy for your work is a major consideration. “All our Mac Pros have an Apple RAID card installed, with four hard disc drives in RAID 5 mode”, McFarlane says. “In effect you’ve got the storage and combined data throughput of three, and if any one of the discs fail you can restore on the fly. It runs in the background so you don’t even have to stop working. The only downtime is a reboot. It’s genius. What it basically does is keep a tally of all the data, so if one dies it can work out the missing data and rebuild your volume”.
Taken in full, the interactive tours are just scratching the surface of Tate Media’s prodigious output. A benefit of their extensive focus on producing films, podcasts and other media is that they also have complete control. “We own and produce all of our content”, says Jane Burton. “We can make the kind of films we want to make and then repurpose it for any number of things, whether it’s for our website or our galleries or a handheld tour”.
In addition to the iPod touch/iPhone tours, Tate Media produces a video podcast series called TateShots (available for free on iTunes), and recently completed a 40-minute documentary for the South Bank Show about artist Cildo Meireles. Their success is resounding proof that museums are no longer limited in the kind of content they want to produce. “What’s interesting at this particular point in time is that the barriers to entry are much lower”, Burton says. “Camera kit is much cheaper, easier to operate, and you don’t have to own a TV channel in order to get your content out there”.
Tate Media has maximised their output across a range of platforms, from handheld tours and mobile experiences beyond the museum’s walls, to more ambitious broadcasting plans for online and terrestrial channels. “We’re looking at all kinds of different ways of getting our material out there, and that’s what Tate is all about”, she concludes. “Engaging the public with art, providing them with information and ideas, and helping them to enjoy it to the full”.
