Posts Tagged ‘the Hatch’

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.

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.

I Am just in the process of updating the Blog with some of the most exciting projects I have worked on recently. We were asked by the lovely guys at Thoughtful to get involved with a very exciting project they were doing for the Liverpool Tate. The project involved using  Smartcode technology and enabled the viewer to engage with rich media content using QR (Quick Response Codes). We were asked to film a short documentary about the Tate Liverpool’s summer exhibition Colour Chart: Reinventing Colour, 1950 to Today which was then edited down to a 1 minute film.

“The idea behind the campaign is the belief that a modern gallery can do more than just hang pictures on walls and throw open their doors. Audiences can be engaged with the artworks in new and exciting ways.” (Quoted from Thoughtful‘s blog)

Viewers could access the film by using a QR code reader which read the smartcode made up of colour chart swatches and streamed the Rich media content from an online server. I-phone users can download the Neo Reader application or smart phone users can go to www.i-nigma.mobi and download the smartcode reader. Click here to read Thoughtful‘s full Blog entry.

Another day another dollar…A change is as good as a rest… and all that pull-aver! Anyways, I have moved into a new studio space called the Elevator which is really cool and has a great vibe about the place. I know its a bit late to be making New Year Resolutions but I am going to take a leaf out of the Greyscalegorrila’s book and begin doing a daily/ weekish photo blog to experiment with photography techniques. I am going to try and be very playful and experimental with it and use both lo-tech and hi-tech equipment.

Anyways, here is a photo of my new space to start the photo blog off. I used the i-phone with Nick Campbell’s (GreyscaleGorilla) Shake it Photo app to get the white border!

P.S. Went arse over t*t over that bench (bottom left) on way out of the office after turning the lights off! Not a great start but thought I would share that with everyone!

Here are the Slides for a course I am teaching for Signal Films up in Cumbria. The course deals with the Basic Rules & Techniques in Photography. Although it deals with the static frame, it is definitely worth a look for any filmmakers as these are techniques that can be carried through to the moving image.

Currently writing a 3 day course in New Digital Media for Signal Films in Cumbria. I am off to the Lakes to meet up with the Film Company next week 25th to the 28th of November! Really looking forward to spending some time even more North West than were I am presently and meeting up with everybody up there!

I’ll post my Teaching materials in the next few days…and so watch this space!

Here is the final edit of our short film Vacuum. I am still in the process of grading it but the edit has finally been locked down and we are currently entering it on the festival circuit. Here is the synopsis;

A psychological social horror about a young couple expecting their first child who move into a new home only to find themselves tormented by the strange behaviour of their clandestine next door neighbour.

Vacuum from the Hatch on Vimeo.

Here is a short 5 second snippet of a Stylized CCTV & type treatment for the credits to our short film ‘Vacuum’. I exported a frame from the POV (point of view) shot of the camera in the film and then took it into After Effects. Basically, I used  Video Copilot’s Twitch to create the havoc in the type and then used Video Copilot’s Riot Gear to add an old style film texture to it. In both the POV shot & the Film effect, I desaturated most of the colour and then used the Curves filter to create a high contrast texture for the Type to work over!

Vacuum – Stylized CCTV & Type test from the Hatch on Vimeo.

The 2nd film I cut was the main Creamfields’ piece! In all fairness, I made some pretty elementary mistakes on the whole shoot during the weekend; The biggest mistake was trusting what the weather was going to be like and I now realize that I do not have any Michael Fish qualities. I had decided to get the DJ performance footage first and leave the interview narrative till the sunday but as you can probably guess it absolutely chucked it down on the Sunday! That’s why there is no content from the actual festival clubbers. I therefore decided to change tact in the edit and begin the film with some Rostrum work of Thoughtful‘s photo’s. This was definitely a ‘Happy Accident’ as I would never have dreamed with starting the film like this. The photos really capture the essence of the moment whereas trying to film clubbers is always difficult as people tend to play up to the camera!

Cream decided to go with David Guetta’s ‘I Gotta Feeling’ track which again was really easy to cut to once I had put some minor little sound edits in! The hardest part of the edit was trying to put a narrative down and create a ‘backbone’ for the film. Note to self; Get your narrative sorted out first as this is the real backbone of the structure of the film. The cutaways will slot in really easy once you have your story -  Narrative is King. I am not going to be too harsh on myself though as my favourite  part of the film is the rostrum work.

Creamfields ’09 from the Hatch on Vimeo.

Here is the first film I edited for Creamfields ’09. I wanted to do a moody little edit with  Sander Van Doorn arriving at Creamfields. Sander’s management company sent over his Purple Haze – ‘Bliksem’ track which was ideal to cut the film to. It was quite hard editing the actual helicopter footage into 30 seconds as there was so much good content. Had to be quite brutal in what stayed and what went. I also tried to be quite bold with changing shot sizes to vary the footage in the confined space.

Shot with a Sony Z1 – Edited in Final Cut Pro & graded in Color

Sander Van Doorn – Creamfields ’09 from the Hatch on Vimeo.