Archive for the ‘Bits & Bobs’ Category

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.

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.

Just doing a project with the BBC that involves some live action Greenscreen sequences. Here is a little bit of research;

2007 Compositing from scw1729 on Vimeo.

Just throwing a few things together regarding Greenscreen shoots. I have always used Keylight in After Effects and find their Training manual a good little read into the art of Keying. (Keylight1.0v4)

Here is the final interactive film called ‘The First Date Complex’ that I worked with Signal Films on. Well done to all the filmmakers who really worked their socks off!