Hofstra University Invests in Studio Upgrades to Experiment with 4K Capabilities

“I think a lot of what we’re going to discover as we go forward with the HD capabilities is the need to have a critical eye on all the things that are noticed when you’re dealing with a higher resolution. It’s going to be much harder to have a realism than those we had in the past. That’s going to be a challenge for us, and we’re going to have to rethink how to approach those classes.”
-Randy Hillebrand, Training Coordinator, Adjunct Associate Professor of Radio, Television, Film at Hofstra University

“The biggest challenge that they faced was getting this level of overhaul done in a very large and complex facility between the end of classes in May to the beginning of classes in the fall,” says Evan Cornog, dean of The Lawrence Herbert School of Communication. “Our classes had begun, but fortunately, this is a facility that has a lot of redundancy and studios use.”

Even though the work was intensive, Cornog says the upgrade and investment in Hitachi was worth it.

He says the cameras will be able to withstand wear and tear from student use, and Hitachi will serve as a supportive resource for any future needs.

“[4K] makes possible new forms of story-telling, and we wanted to have the opportunity to experiment with it,” Cornog says. “It’s certainly early days for 4K in a higher ed environment, and really in production environments in general. We thought this was a rare opportunity for us to be early adopters of a new technology and give our faculty and students, both in their classes in co-curricular activities, a chance to see what new uses these cameras can do.”

Photo by Hofstra University.

Some instructors plan on using class time to see what these cameras can do.

Randy Hillebrand, training coordinator and adjunct associate professor in the Department of Radio, Television, Film at Hofstra, says he’s planning on introducing students to the world of 4K capabilities.

“This spring, I scheduled a practicum class, where, for the first time, we’re going to be able to play with these cameras and 4K capabilities with students,” he says. “It’s an opportunity to mesh our field production high-resolution capabilities with our studio capabilities, and try to start to learn how to deal with 4K technologies and 4K image quality.”