Our M&E team

At Jigsaw24, we’re proud to have some of the best people in the business. Our M&E team is made up of experts who’ve been working in the media and entertainment industry for years, providing our customers with expert solution design, consultancy, professional services and support, all underpinned by best-in-class technology solutions.

Here’s a closer look at some of the faces behind the Jigsaw24 M&E team. After all, we’re not the leading media solutions provider in the industry by coincidence…

With over 20 years’ experience in the post-production industry, Chris is well versed in almost all forms of post-production. He’s currently responsible for delivering high-end solutions and workflows for both post-production and broadcast production.

“My speciality has always been in technical support and solution design, with Avid and core post-production at the heart of everything. More recently I have been instrumental in designing remote workflows for movie studios and small to large post facilities, as well as helping customers transition to virtualised solutions – whether in a public or private cloud. I have also been at the forefront of the move to the cloud for broadcast gallery and processing workflows. And I’m heavily involved in the vendor selection process to make sure Jigsaw24 have the best set of strategic vendors on which to deliver our solutions.”

“The right solution can increase productivity and influence decisions made upstream and downstream of the workflow, so we pride ourselves on meeting the customers’ real needs and pain points. The added value we bring is in our dedication to find the correct solution at the right budget. We are always at the forefront of new and emerging technologies to deliver to our diverse customer base.”

Chris’ journey began at root6, where he was able to work his way through the engineering ranks, supporting all phases of the post-production process. He eventually became a manager of customer support where he led a large team of customer support engineers, as well as working closely with the sales and pre-sales team to deliver solutions, professional services and support at all levels.

After the merger of Jigsaw24 and root6, Chris moved into technical pre-sales, eventually taking the role of lead technical pre-sales consultant, where he currently leads our excellent M&E pre-sales team.

What do you love to do outside of work?

“I have played in multiple bands as a guitarist and a drummer and love movies.” 

What should people get in touch with you about?

• Remote working design and workflows.
• Virtualisation of post-production and production elements.
• Editorial and finishing solutions and workflows with storage and asset management.
• Cloud-based workflows for post and broadcast.
• Next-generation workflows and solutions.
• Avid, Sienna, AWS, R&S, Dell, HPE, Adobe, LucidLink, Quantum, DDP, Streambox, Teradici, Leostream and PAMs.

Get in touch with Chris on LinkedIn.

When not running, cycling or manning the BBQ, Rolf Martens is hard at work designing audio solutions for our post and music customers.

“I’m first and foremost a sound engineer by trade, music fanatic and sound technology geek. I’ve worked for Pinewood Studios archiving and restoring soundtracks for film on ageing formats, then progressed to the Domestic Sound for Film department as a mix technician. After that, I worked as a technical supervisor and sound engineer at VoiceOver Soho before starting here at Jigsaw24. Other roles earlier in my career have included studio installation and live sound, but my main area of expertise is designing custom solutions for post-production and music studios.” 

What should people ask you about?

All my roles have given me great exposure to and experience with industry-standard technologies, so I’m here to help everyone get to grips with the latest workflows, including:

• Avid audio software and hardware.
• Dolby Atmos setups.
• Dante solutions.
• Sound post-production workflows and solutions.

Get in touch with Rolf on LinkedIn. 

Neal has a unique role within Jigsaw24 M&E team which spans across pre-sales, customer support, product training and situation escalation.

One key area of his expertise lies in Avid customer support, where he specialises in infrastructure products such as Avid NEXIS and Avid MediaCentral. He’s also both an Avid Certified Support Representative and Avid Certified Instructor for their technical classes.

"A recent area of expansion of specialism for me has been Hyperconverged infrastructure (or HCI) and hybrid cloud compute technologies from Nutanix, which share many areas of interest for me, and have a great ability to solve many of the challenges that media and broadcast organisations face today.” 

He also specialises in high capacity/high-performance data storage, cloud computing and network infrastructure solutions – with a particular interest in high-performance networking for media data storage applications for news, broadcast and post-production usage.

What’s your background?

“I previously worked for a high-end audio manufacturer in the UK and the USA where I honed my electronics troubleshooting and customer service skills. I then worked for a large M&E-oriented system integrator and reseller in Atlanta, USA, where I expanded my skills to configuring and supporting broadcast and post-production systems. This was also where I was first exposed to non-linear editing and Avid.

I then returned to the UK to work for Avid as a customer support engineer. I was initially based in London, but eventually expanded out to the south west of the UK, and then to the wider EMEA territories as a team lead, specialising in supporting Avid’s infrastructure and storage products, as well as complex non-linear post-production systems.

I left Avid in 2004 to work for root6 as their Manager of Customer Support, based in Soho in London. This was a great opportunity to be more involved in the cut and thrust of the heart of London’s busy post-production scene. In 2015 I took on a more blended role at root6, tending more towards pre-sales support and encompassing the roles I work at today at Jigsaw24 since the merger of the two companies.”

Outside of life at Jigsaw24, Neal’s other interests include photography, music and learning about the technology that underpins these arts. He also loves to run and read.

What should people get in touch with you about?

• Avid Infrastructure product-related projects including individual product and system deployments, audits and upgrades.
• Storage and networking systems for complex media production workflows including performance networking for high data rate/low latency applications.
• Nutanix Hyperconverged infrastructure system scoping, deployment planning, and hybrid cloud system realisation, especially for M&E solution hosting.
• Microsoft Windows platform related solutions.

Get in touch with Neal on LinkedIn.

Phillip works in the Pre-Sales team for Media and Entertainment. When he’s not taking long country walks with his Labrador Alfie or pursuing his interest in photography and film, here are some of the things he gets up to in his day-to-day role…

“I specialise in workstation and storage configurations for media and entertainment businesses at a high level, including asset backup and archive workflows for the extensive unstructured data our clients in this space maintain. I am always on the lookout for new technologies and opportunities to work with and develop them in the media and entertainment sector. Most recently, I’ve been looking at ways to provide solutions for remote working and data access needs brought about by the pandemic, utilising cloud and data centre hosting technologies.”

“Some key projects I’ve worked on in the past few years include complete media storage refreshes, greenfield data centre deployments for post-production customers, the introduction of new data storage and archive workflows, and high-performance network infrastructure projects.” 

Phillip has been with Jigsaw24 for over 10 years, previously working in technical support, before moving into a role in professional services and engineering. He has specialised in M&E in each of these roles, which eventually led him into the pre-sales consultancy role he’s in today.

Prior to his career at Jigsaw24, he completed a BSc Media Technology degree at De Montfort University, Leicester, where he studied video production and post workflows.

What should people get in touch with you about?

“Get in touch with me to discuss data storage and workflow for media assets in post-production. Backup and archive storage are also a focus area for me, and I also look at technical architecture for AWS and other cloud vendors.”

Phillip’s product/vendor focus areas include:

Avid, Editshare, AWS, Adobe, Dell, HPE, HP, Object Matrix, Quantum and LucidLink.

Get in touch with Phillip on LinkedIn.

As an accredited AWS Cloud Practitioner and certified Avid ACSR, Leason has a wealth of experience behind him. Whether it’s building Avid based systems and workflows or setting up Ardis DDP storage and workflows, he knows how to get the job done. He has extensive experience with a wide variety of systems, technologies, and vendors, as well as expertise in networking and storage.

“I work on everything from large to small scale projects including post-production houses, newsrooms, live broadcast, television and sports events - using various technologies to meet the customer’s requirements.”

“I initially started my career as a sound engineer after leaving college and then moved on to become a wireman. From there I moved into a post-production support engineer role with a systems integrator. I then decided I wanted to gain more experience at a facility and went to work as an engineer at a post-production house. Following that, I moved to Root6 as an engineer, providing onsite and remote support. I also completed installations and configurations of new systems. At Root6 I increased my knowledge and skills working on support escalations and large-scale projects, which carried on through to Jigsaw24 following their acquisition of Root6.”

Leason’s main specialities include:

• Support escalation.
• Assistance with planned projects.
• System configuration and integration.
• Network architecture.
• Post-production workflows.

With over 10 years’ experience in post-production and broadcast, Matthew’s expertise spans across a range of solutions - from networking, digital archive, storage, remote editing solutions and asset management. He’s also an Avid ACSR Elite, with a particular focus on Avid NLE, storage and media central systems. He’s been working in the sector from the very beginning of his career, supporting a wide range of M&E projects.

“I initially studied Computing at college and university. My first job was providing IT support for British Telecom. I then moved to become a Junior Support Engineer, supporting post-production and broadcast technologies. I have gone on to build up my skills and experience, working across a wide range of projects and solutions over the years, which I have continued through to the present day at Jigsaw24.”

“Projects vary from large scale newsrooms; broadcasters and posthouses producing film, television and sports content; to charities, corporations and boutique editors.”

Whether it’s designing innovative enterprise class systems for large global corporations and educational facilities, or working with boutique creative post-production companies and charities. Matthew is seasoned in designing, installing and supporting a vast range of enterprise systems, working with solutions such as Avid, Nutanix, VMware ESXi and more.

Outside of the exciting world of M&E, Matthew’s biggest loves are music, travel and classic cars.

What areas can you help with?

• Network architecture.
• Production workflows.
• Systems integration.
• Virtualised workloads.

Get in touch with Matthew on LinkedIn

Want to know more about our services for media and entertainment? Get in touch with the team by calling 03332 409 210 or emailing broadcast@Jigsaw24.com. For the latest news, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. Alternatively, drop your details into the form below and one of the team will be in touch.