Fishing for contracts (From Daily Echo)

A Basingstoke media company is fishing for contracts

9:12am Friday 14th May 2010 in Hampshire Business By Richard Garfield

IT WAS a case of cameras, lights and action when a media company held a special open day at its Basingstoke studio.

Visitors to Sardine Media, including Basingstoke and Deane mayor Councillor Brian Gurden, had an opportunity to see for themselves the company’s green screen technology, autocue, vocal booth, cameras and lighting and editing suites.

Originally set up seven years ago, the production house has recently been resurrected, returning to its Century House base at Vickers Business Park, in Priestley Road, with Dave Gosley joining original partner John Prachett.

Pleased with the level of interest shown, Dave, who like John is a former police officer, said he wanted prospective clients to have a look round the studio and see what Sardine Media can do for them.

Dave said: “Everyone who came here said we are offering what they want, and many came in with a shop ping list.”

And he has high hopes that the open day has produced some promis ing leads, including one from a hotel group based in Buckinghamshire.

“Apparently, they’ve been looking at a number of media companies and when they received our email shot showing what we can do and the methodology behind what we do, they made a beeline for us.

“That’s because as far as technology is concerned, we are up on the game with regard how you portray video on the internet and how you make it accessible.”

Dave said video content is an increasingly important aspect of the online process in selling products, services and ideas on the Internet.

This is particularly so when videos can be streamed live to smart phones like the iPhone and Apple’s iPad, which this month will go on sale in the UK and is set to take the market by storm.

With a track record of producing quality property video tours, corpo rate messages infomercials, training and advertising, Sardine Media already have made a name for themselves with the likes of Sentinel Housing, leading quality house builder Millgate Homes and Romans Estate Agents – the latter having been judged a four star winner at the Daily Mail’s International Property Awards 2009 partly thanks to Sardine Media supplying video to its website.

John describes himself as a “complete and utter tech geek,” while appreciating Dave’s camera skills. He said the pair make a great creative team with a can-do attitude.

John said: “I’ve been involved with video streaming since the middle of the 1990s when it was very much simpler.

“The way things are going now with video on the web, especially with iPhones and iPads everybody wants content delivered directly to them.

“So it makes sense, right at the beginning of all this, to get a foothold and start showing that we can pro duce quality videos for the web.”

The advantage with Sardine Media is that while the production values are high, the cost is affordable.

John said: “There are a lot of old school video production people out there who can do fantastic stuff for TV and film, but their investment has to be so massive. To do that for the web is just out of the price range for the majority of companies. They don’t want to spend that amount.”

To find out more about Sardine Media, visit sardinemedia.com.