Mirror Mirror from the Hatch on Vimeo.

John Moores Art and Design Academy, the Hatch and the Sixth Form Art Students of Holly Lodge School in Liverpool worked together to create a modern day shadow puppet show about the issues of body image and peer pressure for young girls. The piece follows the demise of a happy princess who, with the help of her fairy godmother and magic mirror, changes her appearance drastically to appeal to the ‘in’ crowd. The piece was devised, constructed and performed within two days and will be included in ,Four Corners’; a wider Health and Wellbeing project across Liverpool in July.

Just been reading a little bit about the Fascinate – The Future of Broadcasting project. Some very interesting ideas about the ways in which we will be able to interact with broadcast television.

I had a brilliant day at the Learning Lighthouse last Thursday where I ran a Digital Photography and Photoshop session for 7-11 yr olds with their parents/ grandfathers and guardians. Each session was only 2hrs long and the children/ adults got through quite a lot and more importantly had a lot of fun learning (then breaking) the rules of Photography. The first part of the session was a practical based learning as the young photographers used digital cameras and we followed the Digital Photography Tips & Tricks Presentation . The group then did an introduction to Photoshop and ‘played’ with making titles and adding filters to their photographs. Here is a gallery of all the final pieces. You don’t have to have Photoshop to edit your photographs, there are lots of free on-line photo-editing software . Well done to all the students now photographers who participated on the course and thanks to the lovely crew at The Learning Lighthouse.

Just been looking at the joint venture between the BBC, iTV, C4, Five, BT & Talk Talk called Project Canvas.
The venture’s aim is to ‘to build an open internet-connected TV platform, subject to BBC Trust approval.’

I am writing a presentation for Salford University on thursday and so am going to talk a little bit about Cloud broadcasting. What better example to user than the Gorilla himself GSG . Am going to talk about Ustream and the endless possibilities for producing content ‘by the people for the people’.

How to Stay Productive & Create Great Work

The season finale for the 6th series of House was shot entirely on the Canon DSLR EOS camera.

Here are a couple of films I did for a client called Trafalgar Apartments. I did the shoot in about four hours which wasn’t bad going since I took extra lights down to try and bring out some extra details in the apartments. Both films were shot on a Sony HDV Z1 and were edited in Final Cut Pro and graded in Color. I used a lightweight Ianaro Reporter Lighting Kit and a Vinten Pro 6 tripod.

Trafalgar Apartments from the Hatch on Vimeo.

Trafalgar Apartments from the Hatch on Vimeo.

A good website for Photographers that has a great link to the 10 must have online tools for photographers. The website is called Epic Edits and is a great community blog & resources for those interested in the static shot.

Have been really busy with the BBC the last month working with Milky Tea on the production of a CBeebies’ pilot. We shot the pilot over two days in a converted barn down in Hemel Hempstead. It was a fab couple of days and I will post a bit later once we have got going on the project. In the meantime, here are a few shots from the shoot. It was a completely green screen shoot and was shot on DV Cam. Bit of a shame really as i was trying to convince the Beeb to shoot on HD progressive …. but the budget didn’t allow the extra cost for the pilot. Dave the camera man did a class job of filming and DOP’ing. Again, at a later date I will give a detailed breakdown of the shoot and how he lit the event.