Shooting last few scenes with Rob (Zach!)

So today marks some of the last filming days I have with Rob as Zach! We have one one quick filler in scenes to film of him, then it's just down to filming between Adam and Jamie (Jamie and Ben!) He has been an absolute star to be working with for this project and has always kept mine and the cast's faces smiling. He most certainly knows that he will be appearing on the personal blooper reel a fair amount as well though! 

Heres hoping his future career from here goes really well! I will hopefully be joining him again sometime next month to help produce some of his videos for his magician's act, so maybe next month that will be coming along. Now to start putting together some of these scenes, it may be as of yet that I am able to make a legible narrative out of this (Who knows! Anything is possible nowadays...) 

Jes Stretton music video shoot: "Be happy. Be you."

Still of Jes in the shoot

Tom directing Jes

Freddie the Great Dane

Thursday April 24th, I got on the train to Manchester (after two or three changes due to train times!) and arrived to meet Tom Rout again to assist in the Jes Stretton music video shoot for her upcoming e.p "Be happy, be you." for her May 14th album release of "Surrender". If you want to check Jes out, her twitter is here and her soundcloud is here. 

Tom and I met with Robbie Cavanagh who would also be helping out for the day, and straight from Piccadily Station we jumped into a taxi and made our way towards Longford Park where we would be filming at for the day and where we would be meeting Jes. Unfortunately for us all the extras we had hoped for fell through! However, this didn't stop us from ploughing on; after taking a walk around the park with Jes and Charlotte to scout out locations we got on with some initial filming, which was first to start with Jes introducing the album "Surrender". While this went on it gave me time to be able to set up the glidecam 2000 set up- today was my first proper day with the steadycam set up. It proved a bit tricky at first to adjust to the Canon 60D and get used to the way it was held and used but over the day I found it became easier to operate. 

Me with the Glidecam 2000

Me with the Glidecam 2000 set up

Overall, the day went really well! Thankfully unlike rainy Nottingham that I had travelled from Manchester was surprisngly cheery and sunny, and although we had a little while where it decided to drizzle and dark it soon passed over and we were able to continue the shoot as planned. We managed to try out a variety of angles, and lots of play with it all and overall I feel really confident and happy with how the shoot went down for the day- now it's just up to Tom to put it all together! 

There were so many behind the scenes photos I just couldn't spam the blog with them all, so here is an imgur album full of all the behind the scenes photos from the day!

Over 1000 views on the blog!

A quick update, this blog has officially reached over 1000 views which is brilliant! Thankyou for the support on the blog and I hope you all look forward to my further updates!

Finished scenes with Ben and Antonia

Today marks the day where we finished all the scenes that include "Ben" and "Antonia" and for celebration I included some exclusive behind the scenes photographs of the two off camera. Although Ben and Antonia in the film are a serious, love stricken couple who are both trying to be taken seriously- off screen the two actors are nutters. It has been a pleasure to work with the both of them, and both of them are brilliant. The best of luck to our Antonia- Lisa Ronkowski who moves down to London to pursue her acting career, we are sure that you are going to be brilliant and definitely been going places! We will be seeing you when the premiere comes around. 

Now to take the time to edit down the footage, and now hopefully I have enough footage to be able to put together a suitable trailer for the event! 

While we're here take a look at the "Black Box" Degree show website at www.blackboxfestival.com This is the festival I will be part of where "Ben" will be premiering but also our 80 very talented year of students will also be exhibting across Nottingham. And if you can please donate to our indiegogo campaign as every little bit counts towards funding our festival! 

Dominos short with Ed Parsons

So a few months ago I participated in creating a short for Two for Tuesdays Dominos for the YCN Student Awards 2014; the work is officially sent now, so that means I can finally show the work we produced for it! Results come back in late May (After my university degree show!) so the team all have their fingers crossed!

Click the link here to go to the page to watch!

Gif sets from film

Manchester Live Music Video Shoot

The kit I took with me including: Canon 5D, Canon 60D and Gopro Hero 3 Black

On the evening of Thursday the 27th of March I took my first trip up to Manchester; I was due to work with Tom Rout, a freelance videographer based in Manchester who specialises in "video marketing for musicians". Tom's website can be found here! 

The night was dedicated to doing live coverage of a band's gig and I was to assist in bringing a second angle; what Tom didn't expect was that I was going to kit up and bring three cameras to produce the video. When I arrived in Manchester I was met by Tom and we walked our way to the Gullivers pub and headed upstairs to start the set up. 

Still from the gopro footage

The inside of the venue

As you can see in the above photo the set up with the lighting was very red; however Tom explained that the band were wanting a "grungy look" in the video, which when translated in the videos came across really strongly which can be seen in the above still in the gopro footage. Our first job at the venue was to decide what the set up for each of the cameras was going to be; we decided the 5D would be on Tom's shoulder mount as we could utilise its full functions for the gig and I would use one of the 60Ds unmounted for my own video parts. The other 60D had a 10-24mm lens making it extremely wide angled, so therefore we set it up on the speakers behind the band as a stationary camera to capture the crowd. With the gopro we used a jaws flex mount and put it on the keyboard at the front, facing towards the lead singer.

5D on the shoulder mount

All the kit

Gopro set up side view

Gopro set up front view

60D gorilla tripod set up

The plan for filming was that Tom would stay near the front and mostly film straight long shots of the band, whereas I would move around the venue to capture both the band by also the crowd and everything else. At the start of the gig the band had a video projection and I had to stand at the back to record it (I had to stand on a crate to be able to see over everyone!) but from then I moved around the entire venue to record the atmosphere, including recording behind the sound technician and also through the crowd in-between heads of the crowd. Overall the night was good, the crowd was easy to get through and recording was actually good fun to go through. The video is now going through editing so at the moment there is no physical video but it should be up soon! 

My view from the back with the crowd

The crate I had to use!

View from behind the sound technician 

Final Headshots and Gifs for Promotional Shoot

So I did the final shoot for the headshots and cinemagraphs for the upcoming filming (Filming starts soon!) I redid some of the previous to make them monochrome instead as it kept consistency between the two different shoots but also because I enjoy the effect that black and white has on the cinemagraphs.

Antonia and Zach: Initial Headshots and Cinemagraphs

17/02/14- Studio Shoot

These are the first portraits of the actors, in full costume as their characters. The cinemagraphs are meant to be a short narrative on the character themselves- for example Antonia's character talks of rabbits in the film, but she wasn't sure if they were real or not. With the presence of a toy in the shot too, it shows her still childishness. With Zach we see more of the seriousness he has involving studying his subject, but also the way the pages move back and forth shows how he sometimes feels stuck in an inbetween.

Thankyou to the lovely assistance from Tamara Halsall who did the makeup and also helped with set up!

Ed Parsons- Dominos Collaboration

So today I teamed with Ed Parsons, and Mark Manzi to create another video: the idea is based around that people use different ways to combat stress and Ed particuarly liked the idea that people liked to touch grass to de-stress themselves. Therefore Ed got the idea that someone in a really stressful workplace, in his example an office, would keep a patch of grass in their desk drawer to keep them calm in their very stressful workplace. I was there to help with capturing the sound for various events in the video, create the lighting, help creative input in realising the final product and general odds and ends with operating the camera, helping set up and even helping changing the light-bulbs of the lights. The day was a long one (around seven hours in total for filming!) but it was a good productive one, we got all the shots we wanted and it seemed to go well. Now we just have to wait for Ed to finish the post-production and I can post a video up of it!

Construction of the desk: Ed got wood sized to the table and we attached it with two sides of double sticky tape.

The finished "desk"- gaps were left for electrical wires to run through

Basic set up of the office with novelty old computer, keyboard and phone

Ed making final touches

The drawers were placed underneath the table to make it seem like it was part of the "desk"

Ed's Storyboard

Ed with Tom; we wanted him to look sweaty/clammy so we used a sponge of water to dab onto him.

Tom's close up

First clapper!

Fun on set with Tom, James and Ed.

Top down shot of the typing keyboard

Shot of the keyboard

The highest amount of takes we had that day!

Me operating the boom mic to capture sounds of files and typing

The shot that took 15 takes

Fishing line was attached to the papers to pull them down so they fall off

The fishing line

The whole desk

The shot

The grass was placed in the drawer with double sided sticky tape

Fake grass!

Mark directing Tom on the final scene

Ed took a cameo role in the short to interrupt Tom's calm time.

Mark and Ed finalising some shots

All the notes of the recordings for the day since I couldn't delete on the recorder- hopefully will be easier come post production!

Video up soon!