At the end of last year I was hired by the lovely folks at This Is Crowd to Direct/Shoot/Edit a promotional piece for their client Thomann-Hanry – “The world leading façade cleaning experts” and their latest project cleaning the facade at Somerset House in London. You can read more about the project and Thomann-Hanry’s unique method of cleaning sensitive buildings over on their site HERE and watch the resulting video above, which turned out pretty well, I think.
Big thanks to This Is Crowd for hiring me and especially to Skye. Big thanks also to Claudia from Thomann-Hanry. A pleasure to work with you both.
Shot on a Sony A7III in 4K using Tamron Di III RXD 28-75mm, Canon FD 17mm and Jupiter 11 135mm lenses. Edited and graded in DaVinci Resolve 16
Side Note: The final day of this shoot was just before the UK lockdown due to COVID-19. The edit was a welcome distraction from the beginning of the craziness. Posting the film here now has taken on a slightly surreal edge as it was likely my last job shooting until this is all over. Stay safe, wash your hands and be nice to each other!
The fourth and final of four films from the Women at Cambridge series I had the pleasure of shooting for Duckrabbit and The University Of Cambridge -“Planting women’s roots in Cambridge”
Part of the #RisingTide and #WomenAtCambridge exhibition at The University of Cambridge Library. www.cam.ac.uk/TheRisingTide
From the Youtube description:- The impact of women at Cambridge is incalculable. In 1869, Girton College became the first women’s college at Cambridge, and the first in Britain, to offer residential higher education for women. But Cambridge University did not grant degrees to women until the late 1940s, the last British University to do so.
In this final film, Jo Cobb, Head Gardener of Murray Edwards College, joins co-curator of The Rising Tide: Women at Cambridge exhibition, Dr Lucy Delap, in Eliza Baker Court at Girton College. Here, they discuss the influence of former Head Gardener, Chrystabel Procter on the college and on future female gardeners across the University.
I really enjoyed hanging out with Dr Lucy Delap and meeting Jo Cobb during the making of this. Was very nice to spend time in the Eliza Baker Court at Girton College too. It was also a real pleasure & honor (as it always is) working with Ben from Duckrabbit, who never ceases to amaze with his kind-hearted, open professionalism.
Shot on multiple Sony A7III’s and a Sony FS5 with Tamron 28-75, Sony 16-35 and another lens that I’ve forgotten should you care about that kind of thing :)
The third of four films from the Women at Cambridge series I had the pleasure of shooting for Duckrabbit and The University Of Cambridge -“The ladder of academic success”
Part of the #RisingTide and #WomenAtCambridge exhibition at The University of Cambridge Library. www.cam.ac.uk/TheRisingTide
From the Youtube description:- The impact of women at Cambridge is incalculable. In 1869, Girton College became the first women’s college at Cambridge, and the first in Britain, to offer residential higher education for women. But Cambridge University did not grant degrees to women until the late 1940s, the last British University to do so. In this third of four films, co-curator of Cambridge University Library’s The Rising Tide: Women at Cambridge exhibition, Dr Ben Griffin, is joined by Girton Fellow Dr Dorothy Thompson, to discuss the impact of Muriel Clara Bradbrook, former mistress of Girton College and the first women to become a professor in the Faculty of English. Here, they look at a board game, created by Bradbrook, following the life of a female academic at Cambridge. #TheRisingTide#WomenAtCambridge
Steve Selwood: Cambridge University Women’s Boat Club B, Womens Head of The River 2012 Flickr
I really enjoyed hanging out with Dr Ben Griffin and meeting Dr Dorothy Thompson during the making of this. It was also a real pleasure & honor (as it always is) working with Ben from Duckrabbit, who never ceases to amaze with his kind-hearted, open professionalism.
Shot on multiple Sony A7III’s with Tamron 28-75 and Sony 16-35, should you care about that kind of thing :)
The second of four films from the Women at Cambridge series I had the pleasure of shooting for Duckrabbit and The University Of Cambridge -“Flying the flag for women’s rowing”
Part of the #RisingTide and #WomenAtCambridge exhibition at The University of Cambridge Library. www.cam.ac.uk/TheRisingTide
From the Youtube description:- The impact of women at Cambridge is incalculable. In 1869, Girton College became the first women’s college at Cambridge, and the first in Britain, to offer residential higher education for women. But Cambridge University did not grant degrees to women until the late 1940s, the last British University to do so. In this second of four films, Dr Lucy Delap, co-curator of Cambridge University Library’s The Rising Tide: Women at Cambridge exhibition, is joined by Gemma-Claire Ali of Newnham Boat Club and Siobhan Cassidy, Chair of Cambridge University Women’s Boat Club, to reflect on the history of women’s rowing in Cambridge. In 2013, Cambridge University Women’s Boat Club moved into a boathouse on the River Cam, 70 years after being founded, and are still fighting for equality in women’s rowing.
I really enjoyed hanging out with Lucy Delap , Siobhan Cassidy & Gemma-Claire Ali at the Newnham College boat club during the making of this. It was also a real pleasure & honor (as it always is) working with Ben from Duckrabbit, who never ceases to amaze with his kind-hearted, open professionalism.
Shot on multiple Sony A7III’s with Tamron 28-75 and Sony 16-35.
In September 2019 I traveled to Lviv in Ukraine with Ben from Duckrabbit to make a fundraising film for World Jewish Relief to be shown at their annual dinner. The result of that trip is the film above. I haven’t been able to publicly talk about the film, my time in Lviv or post any pictures until the film was finally released to the public on 4th February 2020.
Lviv is a beautiful city with a brutal history – some great architecture, cobbled streets, trams, Om Nom Nom – one of the best vegan restaurants I’ve ever eaten in, cheap beer and was the site of the Janowska concentration camp .
The fantastic crew for our 7 days in Lviv consisted of Ben duckrabbit (Director), Dan (onscreen), Natalia (who we immediately nicknamed ‘Nutella’, translator), Tanya from World Jewish Relief and myself (camera). We would be interviewing Jewish survivors Semyon, Rosa and Clara. Their stories would bring me to tears more than once.
Listening to the stories of what Semyon, Rosa and Clara went through was a deeply moving and unsettling experience. It’s one thing to read or watch films about what happened to the Jewish people in World War II, to hear about the seige of Leningrad or the violent persecution suffered, but quite another to sit in a small room with someone who lived through those things tell you what it was like, to look in their eyes as they tell you their story. It took me weeks to get over and is not something I’ll ever forget.
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating, that Ben from duckrabbit is an amazing director to work with and it was his generosity of spirit, compassion and professionalism that got me through the somewhat harrowing process of making the film. Thank you Ben.
I would of course also like to thank Tanya and Dan for their amazing work and insights during production. (Big man hugs to Dan for the lift home from the airport on our arrival back in the UK, Cheers bruv:)
Natalia, the translator deserves special mention, not just for her incredible on the spot translations and infectious sense of humor but also for her warm hearted kindness to the interviewees and us the crew throughout. Nutella, we love you!!!
World Jewish Relief as an organization deserves and has, my deep thanks for all the incredible work they do helping survivors across the world. I’m deeply grateful that through them I had the opportunity to travel to Ukraine.
The final and deepest thanks must go to Semyon, Rosa and Clara for their bravery in agreeing to tell their heartbreaking stories to us on camera. I will always remember you, your incredible strength and resilience and I feel honored to have met you.
Below are some photos from what was a truly moving trip.
The first of four films from the Women at Cambridge series I had the pleasure of shooting for Duckrabbit and The University Of Cambridge on Women’s struggle for education.
From the Youtube description:-
The impact of women at Cambridge is incalculable. In 1869, Girton College became the first women’s college at Cambridge, and the first in Britain, to offer residential higher education for women. But Cambridge University did not grant degrees to women until the late 1940s, the last British University to do so. In this first film of a four-film series, Dr Lucy Delap and Dr Ben Griffin, co-curators of Cambridge University Library’s The Rising Tide: Women at Cambridge exhibition, explore women’s historic struggle for equality at Cambridge in the face of mass and sometimes violent opposition.
I really enjoyed hanging out with Lucy Delap and Ben Griffin who were as knowledgable and friendly presenters for the film as you could hope to meet. It was also a real pleasure & honor (as it always is) working with Ben from Duckrabbit, who never ceases to amaze with his kind-hearted, open professionalism.
Shot on Sony A7III with Tamron 28-75 and Sony 16-35. Mostly on the Ziyhun Crane 2 gimbal.
Do you want a flight in a 2 seater plane made in 1951 to check an engine repair with a pilot in his late 70’s and no parachute? Er……. Well, when the pilot is Dave Fradley an ex RAF flight trainer (amongst other things) with over 17,000 flight hours (about 2 years!) and it’s a lovely sunny day autumn day in Cambridgeshire, hell yes!!!
Shot on a Galaxy S8 with a £1 shop wide angle lens :)
My good friend Steve Gullick (the frankly legendary music photographer) just put out his 2nd book of phone photographs entitled “gullogram” so I decided to make a little video to help promote it.
You can buy the book HERE (but watch the video first:)
If you’ve read a music magazine or bought an album by pretty much any band using guitars properly in the last 30 years chances are you’ve seen Steves work. (THOSE Nirvana photographs?……. Mr. Gullick). Over on his Instagram, a different kind of work is prevalent though, more of a “visual diary” as he describes it. This is where the photos in “gullogram” come from.
The video was originally conceived as an Instagram piece, but as soon as I put a mic on him I realised something longer was going to be necessary, plus how many people watch videos with sound on Instagram? Frankly, we could have talked for an hour on the subject of just this, let alone Steves other work and that conversation may (or may not) be forthcoming in the future. As it is you get 3 ish minutes of Mr. Gullicks dulcet tones on the book and phone photography.
Shot with my current lens obsession the Helios 40 85mm F1.5 on a Sony A7III.
So, I got a replacement for the Russian 20mm lens I talked about in THIS post, a later for export version that doesn’t look as cool but maintains most of the beautiful characteristics of its older brother.
My “new” Russian Mir 20M 20mm f3.5 lens
So, one sunny spring evening I went to one of the largest water meadows in the UK for some wide angle flare fun with the Russian Mir 20M 20mm f3.5 on a Sony A7III, in slo-mo of course.
I do REALLY like this lens and will likely hang on to it for a while but its not very useful for video work as the convex front element means it can’t be used with screw on filters (No ND !!!) and I hate faffing about with matte boxes on these small hybrid mirrorless cameras. You can, as I did here, shoot slomo and crank the shutter speed to get near correct exposure but it’s by no means ideal and not usable for everything.
It made for a nice little evening in the meadow though :)
I’ve also been meaning to learn DaVinci Resolve for a while so thought I’d try out Resolve 16 Public Beta. It is not quite what I’m used to editing in Premiere, there are many things to like about it, as well as some that will take some getting used to (all new keyboard shortcuts slowing me down considerably despite the “Premiere” mapping that isn’t even close in the Resolve mapping options). I’ll definitely be using it more. It does render out VERY fast compared to Premiere, due to the better use of a computers GPU.
I’ve got another old Russian lens on the way and this one promises to be something special so look out for some tests with that coming soon :)
I’ve become a little obsessed with old manual lenses of late, particularly the Russian ones, I have a Helios 44-2 58mm f2 and a Jupiter 11 135mm f4 which I LOVE, they are very sharp, have some amazing bokeh characteristics and are cheap, which means you can experiment with lenses with some personality without spending a fortune. Would I use them on most commercial jobs? unlikely, but for when you have more time or want to get a bit more “creative” they are wonderful. I was looking for something wide to compliment the 58mm and the 135mm which lead me to the Mir 20mm f3.5. There are, it turns out, a number of variations of this lens but I particularly wanted the Russian (as opposed to international) version with Russian script. Why? well, just because.
I came across a Mir 20N with the Russian script in M42 mount (this, it turns out, should have been a red flag – more on that later) on eBay and ordered it. Happy Days!
Russian Mir 20N 20mm f3.5 in M42 mount?
I had to wait another week for a different M42 to E mount adapter to arrive as there are 2 kinds, the ones that have a flange inside at the base of the thread to aid in registration and those that don’t (see photo below) The Mir 20 I had ordered had an aperture lever which prevented it from being used on the adapter I already had.
(left) M42 adapter without flange, (right) M42 adapter with flange
What I believe to be a modified Nikon F mount to M42 mount Mir 20N, with aperture lever.
Initial testing looked good, the crazy flares (God rays anyone?) were there and the lens seemed sharp, but I noticed some problems with the aperture blades not fully opening and realised the copy I had bought was damaged. If you look closely in the photo below you can see the aperture blade at the top is not in the position it should be and all the aperture blades are not fully retracted at f3.5.
Faulty aperture blades on a Mir 20N 20mm f3.5
From what I’ve read HERE (great site if you are interested in old lenses by the way!) and various other places I think the copy I purchased has been modified from Nikon F mount to M42 for some reason (It looks like the Nikon mount version and not the other photos I’ve seen of the M42 mount version) and in the process the aperture mechanism has been damaged.
***UPDATE*** It seems I may be wrong about the modified Nikon F mount thoughts, apparently the 20N was made in very limited quantities in M42 mount. Doesn’t help with my faulty aperture blades though :(
Of course the eBay seller failed to mention any problems……..
Reluctantly I initiated a return on eBay, but not before I’d shot some more tests you can see in the video at the top and the photos in this post.
I really like the lens and will definitely be buying another copy and thanks to the internet will be more careful and buy a MC 20M M42 version next time.
So, here’s an animation I’ve been working on as part of development for a (possible) longer idea. (Best seen full screen with the sound:)
Animation is made doubly difficult for me, because despite having an artist for a father, I CANNOT draw. So, this took a while, and used a fair few photo and video references to get there, it’s also the first real character animation I’ve tried to do in this 2D style. It is A LOT of work.
New found respect for all people doing this for the movies etc.
After Effects in case you were wondering, with some audio tweaking in Audition.
As part of the “Future Takeover” event in St Neots in Jan 2019 which Documentally and I made a film about the Neotists for (view it HERE), I was also asked by Collusion to make a short film of the event itself.
From the YouTube description:-
Future Takeover was a three day exploration into the long-term growth of St Neots and its creative sector through ambitious thinking.
24 January – CREATIVE ST NEOTS 25 January – IF ST NEOTS WERE SIM CITY: Town planning with a twist 26 January – FUTURE TOWN FAIR
Recently I was hired to make a documentary about Cambridgeshire artist Michael Murfin to accompany his “A State Of Change” exhibition at St Neots Museum Exhibition Room which runs from March 13th – April 27th 2019.
Michael talks about his life, work and about the oil paintings recording the A14 upgrade project in Cambridgeshire that make up the exhibition.
The subtitling was done using the awesome service over at rev.com who turned around the 14 minute film in about 3 hours with 99% accuracy for a VERY reasonable price. I’m not associated with them in any way, but this definitely won’t be the last time I use them.
Many Thanks to Michael & Hilary for their hospitality, tea and humour throughout the process.
Cartesian Reunion Memorial Orchestra – The Little Prince, A Ballet In Two Acts “On Matters Of Consequence – Act I” “On Things Invisible To The Eye – Act II” “Gifts Of Stars – Act II”
I was recently hired along with friend and collaborator Christian “Documentally” Payne to make a short film about a local creative collective the Neotists (which we are both members of) for a very interesting event in St Neots organised by Collusion and the Neotists called “Future Takeover” (January 24-26 2019)
“Future Takeover” – an event over three days exploring the long-term growth of St Neots and its creative sector through ambitious thinking.
Documentally did a great job (as always) of interviewing the subjects, putting them at ease and gently extracting the best answers. A real pleasure to work with him as always.
Thanks to Collusion for hiring us to do it and for putting on the “Future Takeover” event, Thanks also to the films subjects who it was great fun and a real pleasure to meet and shoot with :- Richard Slade, Hilary Murfin, Rachel Tackley, Simon Harper & Bernadette Vong.
I love me a good co-opted pagan festival celebrating the historically incorrect birthday of a middle eastern man (now rendered as Caucasian, because…… white people) who thought he was the offspring of a deity and wasn’t averse to subjugating the odd sex worker, especially when the festivities involve choking (between mouthfuls of antibiotic infused, factory farmed & force-fed till its legs broke meat product) on the rancid engorged member of late-stage capitalism whilst sobbing gently in self-loathing at not being able to afford the latest Sang-Apple-tendo electronic gadget for your ungrateful little snow flake spawn. Love it.
I don’t do Christmas cards……. but if I did they’d be 3d printed working snow globes (filled with the tears of food bank children and the ground up bones of pedophile priests) based on the animation above that I spent way too much time making as festive as I could.
I’d send them out using an online retailers zero hour contract staff to everyone I’d ever met whilst dancing naked around a fire on the shortest day of the year pleading with the old gods to strike me down where I pranced.
Merry Christmas 2018 and a very happy new year to everyone!!!
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.AcceptRejectRead More
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
