It’s that time again, a self-indulgent review of my year and this is only part 1!, ostensibly for anyone reading here but basically for me to remember all the stuff that went down.
So, I’ll just get on with it……
January
I made a video with Christian “Documentally” Payne advertising our services, turned out it would be the first of many videos and Documentally related japes this year.
I did a little interview for St Neots based creative collective Neotists for their “5 Questions” series (HERE)
I became convinced I could take David in a sword fight….
The march of time…er……marched on :)
But it didn’t matter as I found what I’d been searching for!
February
I was playing around in after effects…. A LOT.
I made this for Documentally:-
Documentally.com Ident from Uchujin on Vimeo.
And wrote a blog post about it.
Eiichi “Scart” Miyamoto finally sent me the pictures we’d taken (large format expired Polaroid) on one of our last nights together in Tokyo. I got a bit watery eyed.
My (little) brother got married, so more watery eyes……also because my other brother and his partner were over from Australia and its been a while since I saw them……
We learnt that vacum packed matress unwrapping is damn good fun :)
And as part of my constant effort to evolve there were….
March
It was only March, but I was haunted by the ghost of Christmas future.
I went on an epic last minute road trip with Documentally to North Wales. It was fucking awesome.
I was at BVE (Broadcast Video Exhibition) in London with Dan Chung shooting for Newsshooter. Oh and I met Mike Lindup from Level 42 :)
I also did a review of the MTF Services/Brightcast flexible LED light for Newsshooter :)
The urban world looked beautiful…..
My Wife and my Dad formed a biker gang…..
Martin Cooper and I were hard at work at StormHD in London editing the trailer for “Traces Of The Soul” the project that has taken up a lot of this year a feature documentary featuring 12 contemporary calligraphers from across the world (more on that later)
Morale management was a little harsh at Storm tho :)
All said and done it was an eggcelent month….
April
The “Traces Of The Soul” trailer and website went live :)
I got a dope new tattoo (my first in English) from the crazy talented KOBE, one of the artists featured in “Traces Of The Soul”
I was filming with Laica and Graham Dunning in a disused nuclear bunker for a project they are working on.
I did a little ident for MZed to use at the beginnings of their videos , a great site to watch some awesome long form tutorials on all aspects of film making.
As usual, I had my head in clouds.
May
I visited my dear friends Mr & Ms Muju at Toycon in that there London and even made a little film about it.
I got to see one of my favorite people Mr Jon Ellis (unfortunately for all the wrong reasons) and we looked like brothers….
I finally updated my main site so it played nice on mobiles, which involved a trip down the Bootstrap rabbit hole :)
We were filming with Soraya Syed in London for “Traces Of The Soul”
“Boys For Sale” the documentary on male sex workers in Tokyo I Produced and was Director of Photography on had it’s sold out world premiere at Nippon Connection Film Festival in Germany.
It was the beginning of what would prove to be an amazing year for the film.
I also did the ident for the Immersive Shooter videos and wrote a post about my initial adventures with 360 photos.
And we finally reached peak £1 shop….
June
I got to play around with a Sony FS5 with the RAW upgrade and an Atomos Shogun so I could record at 200fps.
I called Documentally (yep, him again) with a couple of propositions for what to film, the first idea ended badly (see above) but the second video turned out amazing :)
Despite my firmly held belief that if voting changed anything they’d make it illegal, I did my civic duty and voted for the “Vote For Yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket Party”
I ended up at a very aptly named pub for my birthday lunch with a very old friend.
I wrote an article for Newsshooter.com about the filming of “Boys For Sale”
On another special little road trip with Documentally we were reading the Orwell Society Journal and came across this gem of a quote :)
We were on our way to the 1984 Syposium an event organised by Documentally to celebrate Eric Arthur Blair (a.k.a. George Orwell) ‘s birthday.
I made a video and wrote a blog post about it.
I woke up to this sight one morning. Horrific.
Well done if you made it thru the first 6 months……the rest coming up in part 2……..
