Eco Friendly Christmas Dinner

On the 6th of December I went to Acorn House Restaurant in Kings Cross to film a short web video for Npower. The idea of the video was to show how you can save energy when cooking Christmas dinner, as well as a few other energy saving tips to help and cut down your bills and do your "green" bit for Christmas.

It was a very small crew for this job, just two in fact Jon Essex and myself both camera operating and setting up the few lights we needed for this shoot. It was a very relaxed shoot as there was not a million people running around panicking, we just got the shots we needed to as they came up in the cooking process and talked about a few other energy saving tips in between. But the day did get considerably harder as the turkey started to cook and we were working with the beautiful cooking smells around us!

Once the meal was cooked we filmed the final section, the carving, then put our cameras down and ate it! A throughly enjoyable shoot as I'm sure you'd agree.

I appologise for the lateness of this post, as I have been away over the Christmas period but now I have a few photos to put up and a link to the video should you wish to have a look.

Thank you for reading I hope you had a lovely Christmas.

www.npower.com/energyefficientchristmas

"Back in time"

"Back In Time" is the second Kodak film student competition I've worked on as focus puller. This shoot was a little different to the first Kodak short I worked on in that it was a three day shoot and on the two days I was there we used 4 rolls of film, which I thought was against the rules! I was led to believe you were only allowed to use one roll of film per shoot! But hey, not my film, but still a little strange to break the rules of the competition before sending it in!

"Back in Time" is an advert for a Kodak digital picture frame, it was a very simple idea but I think it works well. The first day of shooting we were out on Hampstead Heath in the driving rain and wind, which was pleasant by any means but it was only a short day so bearable. The first days shooting was set in the eighties so there were some interesting outfits worn by our three actors which turned a few dog walkers heads, the scene was supposed to be a memorable family moment in which they take a picture which is later shown on the picture frame.

The second days shooting was shot in studio 1 at the NFTS. The set was fantastic! The attention to detail and the design was great, the lighting was great, I was really impressed. We had a fairly short day planned and it was all supposed to be pretty straight forward, supposed to be being the operative word. On the first shot I had the camera all set up and we had started blocking when the director said, "your not going to have the camera there though when we shoot though are you?" Bad times! Where the director wanted the shot to be from involved some major lighting changes which set us back considerably before we had even shot the first take of the day which was a real shame. But for the best part of the day the shooting went smoothly, our first AD Ben Hopwood was very good and kept us all moving along at a good pace and we wrapped on time. It was a great little shoot that I hope does very well. It was the first time I had worked with the DOP Benoir Soler and I was impressed with his visual style and a little taken aback by his one man camera team attitude to DOP, he was very keen to do most of my jobs himself, which was a little strange but it did give me time to do the 2nd AC jobs I had to do as well as the 1st AC role.

Next up a Christmas commercial for npower!

"Later" continued...

The final day of shooting on later was a battle against the elements. Setting up lights fed off a generator in howling winds and driving rain is pretty far from ideal working conditions, but when is filming on location ever ideal? The main challenge being, finding a place to put the generator so that it could not be heard but still being within reach using the cables we had to power the lights. Then once that was done we had to anchor the lights to stop them from blowing over in the strong winds. All this was being done in the dark in a cemetery!

There were some very intense scenes to shoot on sunday which I won't say too much about as not to give the plot away, but the fact that it was being shot in a cemetery probably says enough. But again as I mentioned in the last post, the crew were all very professional and set to work with out letting the conditions get to them. We did have a few hiccups along the way after our location move (still in the cemetery, just a little further down the road.) At one point the hard drive on the camera failed and we lost a take, and at almost the same time the generator failed and we were plunged into darkness! But these problems were quickly resolved and shooting continued. We eventually wrapped at 2 am with what I thought were some beautiful shots. We then however had the challenge of wrapping the equipment in the dark, so with carefully positioned car headlights and torches myself and the two other sparks ran around the cemetery gathering up cables and lights and trying to arrange them into the van. Which is surprisingly difficult in the dark but what's life with out challenges.

All in all I thought that "later" was a great story and we had a great crew, I only found out on Sunday that our Director is in fact a rather well known story board artist who's recent titles including the Decent part 2 and Sherlock Holmes. Again I was not allowed to take any pictures although there was an on set photographer this time so hopefully there will be a website to which I can direct you so you can have a peek at what we got up to on set, but I apologize for not having a picture with this blog.

"Later"

Yesterday the 19th of November I was working as a grip on a short film called "later" which is Directed by Simon Duric. I don't normally work as a grip, I applied for the job of spark on this production but I have worked with the DOP Luke Bryant before as a grip, so he asked if I would mind gripping again for him on this production. Truth be told there was not much grip work to be done, we used the dolly for one shot! So I spent the rest of the day helping out the sparks, which is what I applied to do in the first place anyway! The entire crew were very good. I was very impressed with every one, for an expenses only shoot the level of professionalism was very high, the prosthetics were incredible, the special effects scenes looked great, every body was on good form!

The short is being shot on the R.E.D camera which seems to be the popular choice for low budget shoots at the moment. I personally am a fan, I think it looks great. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't compare to film and I don't think anything ever will but when shooting at 4k resolution the visuals look amazing. Also the ease of which you can view the rushes, not having to load and unload mags and not having to check the gate after every slate makes things a lot easier and when you can still use 35 mm prime lenses you still get a great look. You only have to look at such feature films as District 9 and the Che films to see how impressive the R.E.D visuals can be.

Unfortunately I was not allowed to take any pictures on the set yesterday so I don't have any pictures to put up along with this post, but instead Im going to give you a link to a music video I worked on earlier in the year that was shot on the R.E.D camera. I will be back on the set of "Later" on sunday when there will hope fully be more grip work to be done. For now Im going to enjoy the weekend, and I hope you will all do the same.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ1JjRv0VfQ

Kodak Cinematography Competition

Yesterday I went to Beaconsfield to work on a short anti smoking campaign which is to be submitted to the Kodak Film school competition. I'm told that the rules for the competition were slightly different this year in that you had to submit the brief for your film to Kodak and they then decide which of the films submitted will go through into production. The NFTS had 13 briefs accepted to go through into production this year which is an incredible effort that show's the high standards of NFT's students. But due to the financial situation at the moment the NFTS didn't have enough money to give each of the 13 groups the normal £1000 budget for there productions and instead had to make their shorts for £600. So with just over half the regular budget things were going to be a little more difficult for the participating filmmakers from the NFTS. With 13 groups going into production, the NFTS had to organize the shoots so that each group would not have to fight for equipment but still have enough time to finish their productions and submit them by the December 16th deadline. Each group was assigned a day in which to shoot their film, the day that was assigned to the group I was focus pulling for being the 14th of November. How ever, having only found out on the 12th that our brief had been accepted it didn't leave a lot of time to get a crew together and sort out all that is necessary to make a production work. But they managed to get it all sorted, and when I turned up at 9 am we were all ready to shoot.

The weather forecast did not look good for the weekend so I was a little bit concerned when I was told that it was to be all exterior shots. But the weather was fine first thing Saturday morning in Beaconsfield, so we went to the pub gardens where we would be shooting and set up ready for the first shot. All was well, we were just blocking through the actions when the heavens opened and gale force winds picked up. There were umbrellas blowing all over the place and our gaffer was chasing poly boards around the garden, things did not look good. After a quick H.O.D meeting it was decided that we could not film in this location, we were going to have to move indoors. It being an anti smoking campaign going indoors was less than ideal as you can no longer smoke inside public places!

With storms raging outside we went to our new location and got set up ready to go. The location wasn't great and I don't think our Director of Photography Phil Moreton was to happy about it, but it was this or nothing. Despite this, shooting went really well, there were no problems through out the day. The actors were great and the crew were all really on form. I hope that the film looks good and that they do well in the competition. For more information on the competition please check out the kodak site:

http://motion.kodak.com/GB/en/motion/Education/Filmschool_Competition/index.htm

Iv posted a few production pictures along with this post, I hope you enjoy sorry it was such a long one this time!

Warhouse Edit

Yesterday afternoon I went to check up on the Warhouse edit. The Warhouse is a feature I worked on as a focus puller earlier in the year, it was in fact my first job as focus puller so I was keen to check up on it and see how many shots I'd got soft!!

I got into the office and was welcomed by Luke Massey (director, DOP,) Mark Kendrick (sound, editor,) Ben Read (executive producer,) Wigsy (actor) and a few other people who were always around on set to help out where ever needed.

At the end of the shoot Luke told me that we had 52 hours of footage to cram into aprox a 90 min film, which is a pretty mammoth task for any editor, Especially when the edit suite is the size of a shoe box and crammed with all the film equipment as well as Mark and Luke. But I was pleased to see that they had moved into a larger office and they were in talks about setting up green screen studio in the office!

Bearing in mind that there was 52 hours of footage to scan through as well as logging some of the tapes as our hard drive died half way through the shoot i was amazed to hear that they had completed a rough cut (running in at about 3 hours 40 mins!!) and had started on on the final offline edit. I was treated to a sneak peek at the opening scene which I thought was brilliant (and all the shots were sharp, much to my relief!) It looks beautiful and builds tension really well to set the scene for the rest of the film! Good work guys, well impressed!

Luke also showed me a short selection of out takes which brought back some very good memories of what was a brilliant shoot. Some very unexpected lines from Joseph Morgan (lead actor), Some ridiculous clapper boards from our camera assistant Dave Robinson and a bit of Wigsy the friendly fallen in there to.

Hopefully I will have more opportunities to check up on the post production of this film, and I will keep you updated as and when I do. But if you would like to hear more about the progress of the warhouse in post-production then check out the Director, Luke Massey's blog at: http://afistfuloffilms.wordpress.com/

The picture shows Luke and Mark hard at work, probably reveling at how amazing the second monitor looks after 2 months of editing with out it!

New Beginnings

Until now this blog page has largely remained ... unused. But from now on I am going to try and make a new blog entry after every job I do to tell you a little bit about what I've been up to and working on. I will do my best to include pictures and links to websites of certain productions but, I'm not sure quite how much I can show to those who have not worked on these productions but we will see. November has just begun, lets see what work it will bring.