littleblackheart

Neotists – Five questions for creatives: Adrian Storey

Video Production Services – Christian “Documentally” Payne and Adrian “Uchujin” Storey

Starting the new year as I mean to go on I’ve been working on a few new things with more exciting stuff coming in the next couple of months.
One of those is a collaboration with Christian “Documentally” Payne – Creative Director, Technologist & Documentarian.
(And it should be noted a very interesting, funny and nice man, you should subscribe to his newsletter – the poor dear only has 25K (!!) followers on Twitter so go follow him there too:)

Here is the video we are using to pitch for work, feel free to share it EVERYWHERE!

If there’s anything we can help you with don’t hesitate to contact us!

Need a video?
Christian “Documentally” Payne & Adrian “Uchujin” Storey have teamed up!
Should you need any top-spec high quality videography let us know.
Documentally.com and uchujin.co.uk
on twitter:
twitter.com/documentally
twitter.com/uchujinphoto

Uchujin 2016 Review – Part 2

(Continued from Part 1)

The ancient Chinese oft quoted curse “May you live in interesting times” got used a lot in 2016, for me at least it was a huge shake up of a year and “interesting” barely covered it…

This Part 2 of my look back at the heartless confusing and yet liberating and life altering bastard of a year that was 2016 begins in…

July

After 10 years and 1 day exactly and a LONG way overdue I finally left Japan to return to the UK.
I didn’t write much about that then, and I haven’t since.
I have plenty to say about it, believe me, but the little black ball of anger and disgust deep inside me is not a good place to make public statements from so I’m going to refrain.
It did feel like a huge relief to get on that plane knowing that it was the (almost certainly, but never say never) final time I’d be doing it.
I cried me a river in the days leading up to it but only from saying goodbye to friends and I’ve never been any good at goodbyes so that was no surprise…

My almost weekly for 10 years Friday nights will never be quite the same…

My brother in law thought this would be suitable for a send off meal…

And then suddenly, I was here and it felt like a huge weight had been lifted…

I hit the ground running and within days was in London with Martin Cooper the director of “Traces Of The Soul” editing the trailer at Storm HD…

I had my priorities straight too and bought a lovely new bed to get out of at 6am everyday…

The weather was uncharacteristically kind…

I found some great photos in boxes I haven’t looked in for 20 years, this one by the legendary Dave “Mr Muju” Ashlin…
It’s me playing a gig many moons ago in Brighton with the band I had with Rochelle Vincente – “The Hawkline Orchestra”

And it was another month when we didn’t lose anyone who meant anything to me…though I personally experienced 1 or more little deaths :)

August

I was up in Sheffield with Martin Cooper shooting for “Traces of the soul” – 2 amazing artists with incredible stories, Calligraphitti Ambassadors Iranian born Ghalamdar and Englishman Karl “Kobe” O’brien…

We were “up north” so we breakfasted accordingly…

I bought a car and started driving for the first time in 14 years, not scary at all, no sir…

I was at Silverstone to film drift car nutcase Buttsy Butler for my friends at Postfuel. I didn’t let Buttsy drive my new car…

The UK was proving to very car oriented as I also went for a drive in this beauty…

I was reconnecting with some dear old friends from WAY back in the day…

Being back was beautiful and weird in almost equal measure…

We lost Gene Wilder and the man responsible for the Backstreet boys and N’Sync, Lou Pearlman…

September

The piece I DP’d/Shot/Edited on Buttsy Butler in August went up on the Influx site…

I started another Instagram account to post pics of the out of date food I kept finding in my Dad’s cupboards…

I was at IBC 2016 in Amsterdam with the News shooter crew and very interesting it was too, plus Amsterdam is beautiful…

This was my favorite tattoo from the show…

And this my favorite piece of street sculpture…

It seemed there was barely time to catch a breath before I was passing through Brussels on my way to Photokina 2016 in Cologne again with News shooter…

Where Dan Chung and Kai Man Wong were causing trouble outside the Fuji booth , and I was just lurking in the background…

I shot and edited a load of reports from the show…

Our hotel was next to a refugee detention center which made me feel a bit weird…

Dan Chung has officially the most ridiculous unread mail count I’ve ever seen…

Then I was back in the UK, where I hooked up with my new friend Richard Slade from Neotists to watch him talk at Pecha Kucha St Neots…

Again we didn’t lose anyone who made it to my radar

October

This months piece I DP’d/Shot/Edited for Influx was on Bowler Motorsport in Derbyshire who make custom rally cars based on Land Rovers…

I was self medicating because I had a horrible cold…

I did get a new toy from the lovely people at CAME TV and ran around using it for all kinds of fun filming…

After months and 1 expensive unsuccessful application my wife finally got her UK visa and arrived, to celebrate we went to visit my dear old friends in the awesome Mujuworld in Cornwall and I made a little travelogue about it…

After 10 years of not being allowed in swimming pools due to fucking stupid Japanese rules about people with tattoos I was determined to get fit and was (still am!!) swimming 1km a week…

It was a struggle not to fire bomb the house where Margaret Thatcher grew up on a visit to Grantham…

10 years in Japan and not one cos-play incident, 4 months in the UK and I was reduced to this…

And at last I found the answer…

We lost Pete Burns and Joan Marie Johnson.

November

I was super happy to have 4 of my films in the St Neots film festival…

I was on a plane again, this time to Barcelona, I’d signed an NDA so I couldn’t talk about why though…Luckily Dan Chung and I accidentally shot a video about it on a ridiculous Sony RX100 V set up…

Dan and Phillip really needed to get a room while we there…

I was starting to feel like I’d lost a little weight since I got back…

Luckily I found a supplier of the only thing I miss from Japan (my dear friends aside) to add some nutrition…

I didn’t buy anything at the farm shop however…

The supermoon was pretty impressive when it managed to make itself known thru the cloud cover…

Enid was providing me with reading material…

We lost Eddie Harsch, Leonard Cohen, Robert Vaughn and Andrew Sachs…

December

Richard “Neotists” Slade and I went on a mission to deepest Suffolk in search of…

A design classic, the Herman Miller Aeron, my home edit suite just seriously leveled up…

I visited a U.S. Air force Nuclear bunker with Richard Slade and Dave “Laica” Fleet, scouting locations for upcoming projects…

Charlie Brooker had some thoughts on the future of VR…

I published my 2016 Showreel (Hint Hint, Hire me!!!)
Music “A shrine for horses” by Laica – laica.bandcamp.com

Then everything ground to a halt as I had a biopsy on my tongue that meant that it was really painful to swallow, eat or talk and sleep was a distant memory for well over a week…
(I’m sure some people thought the me not talking thing was fine)

We did go full Jesus’ birthday preparations, my first tree for many years, which cheered me up a little.
Pretty much worse time of the year to not be able to eat anything but soup tho, luckily single malt is most definitely a liquid…

We lost Greg Lake and Peter Vaughan…

There’s still another 2 weeks of 2016 technically but I doubt any of what that will contain is relevant here, probably a few more childhood hero’s deaths if the rest of the year has been anything to go by, so I’m gonna wrap things up here…

If you made it this far with my 2016 review, Thanks, but seriously you should get out more.
If you read my blog at all, BIG Thanks!

Thanks once again to all my friends new and now far away without whom I wouldn’t have made it to the end of this year intact. Big Love to you all.

Go! have a great end to the year and heres to a great 2017!!

Uchujin / Adrian Storey Showreel 2016

My D.O.P. / Camerman / Editor Showreel 2016
Music “A shrine for horses” by Laica – laica.bandcamp.com
Used with kind permission of the artist.

You can see my previous years show reels HERE.

Please contact me for worldwide projects large or small.

Uchujin Visits A Nuclear Bunker

It’s not often you get asked if you wanna go on a tour of a U.S. Air force underground Nuclear Bunker on a Wednesday morning, but when you do, you drop everything and say “Hell yes!”
So that’s how I ended up at a secret location taking pictures of one that was used as a U-2 Spyplane command center for an upcoming project (projects?)
Weird fun…

Uchujin 2016 Review – Part 1

Well…We’re here again, the end of another rotation around the sun.
This is a year I will never forget as it was the year I finally escaped Japan – after 10 years and 1 day exactly.
5 months in to my rehab/recovery and I can honestly say ….. well I could write a book on how I feel about the whole thing, but I won’t for everyone’s sake….Let’s just say, so far, it feels 99% like the right decision.

As I settle into my new life the only things I miss from that god forsaken set of islands off the coast of China are my dear friends (that was always going to be the hardest part) and natto, and I’ve found a natto supplier close by…

I’m splitting this years end of year look back into 2 pre and post Jexit (see what I did there? Topical :) posts to make them less ridiculous to read and because that’s how the year has felt.

A big thank you to the friends (new and far away) and colleagues who made it as always an interesting, productive year.

Thanks also to the clients who hired me and gave me the opportunities to work on some interesting and diverse projects and a pre-emptive thanks to all the new clients who are going to hire me in 2017 to do amazing work for them…

So settle in for part 1 of the run through of the bastard that was 2016……

January

Whilst I was hiding my scary tattooed body away from the poor easily frightened Japanese people in a private hot spring bath 2016 started the way we were soon to understand it meant to go on, with the death of David Bowie closely followed by actor Alan Rickman…

I published my collaboration video with calligrapher Nakajima Hiroyuki promoting his upcoming aptly named “LIFE” exhibition. (All shot on an iPhone 5s by the way…)

I visited my dear friend Sean Lotman and his family in Kyoto (probably for the last time) , managing to be there for the 1st birthday of his son.

Mt Fuji was peaking between the buildings in Shibuya…

My wife looked awesome in her kimono on a visit to Kawasaki Daishi…

We published the first episode of an ill fated collaboration podcast “You’re not from ’round here” with Matthew Downs a rice farmer on Sado Island.

And most days my head felt a bit like this….

Feburary

In what was to turn out to be the beginning of a great friendship I interviewed legendary calligrapher Koji Kakinuma for the documentary I’ve been DPing and producing in 2016, “Traces of the soul” about calligraphers worldwide…

The awesome talents that are Eiichi & Atsuko “Scart” Miyamoto finally (seriously Eiichi….finally!!) opened their gallery in Tsukiji and I was lucky enough to get riotously drunk with them at the opening party…

I interviewed super lovely guy and talented calligrapher Hiroyuki Nakajima for the second time, again for “Traces of the soul”…

After a shoot for his “Strangers” fashion label (All the product and look shots over on the site where shot by me) I grabbed a quick portrait of my dear friend Kevin Mullin and his writer/editor soon to be wife AnneMarie Luck…

I went to CP+ 2016 with Matt Allard from Newshooter and even ended up with my first cameo of the year in the video:)…

We published the 2nd and what turned out to be final episode of the “You’re not from ’round here” podcast this time with the awesome Anthony Davis…

Spotted a great paste-up in Shibuya alongside a new 281_Anti nuke sticker…

And I was enjoying taking pictures of the fucked up-ness of Tokyo again thanks to the low-light capabilities of my recently purchased Sony A7SII and having my hand firmly on the exit door…

We lost Dave Mirra, Vanity & Harper Lee among others….

March

I was hanging out with my new girlfriend…

And taking photos of Matt Allard for News shooter while he tested the Tokina 100mm PL mount Macro on his serial number 2 (!) Sony F35…

Matt Allard and I also went to NAC in Tokyo to test out some $1300 Arri Sky Panels and while we were there we tested my $70 Pergear light with some interesting results…

Underworld played a secret gig in Shibuya and I was at the soundcheck and got to meet Karl & Rick…

I was shooting for a personal project using the Varavon Birdy cam…

I also used the Varavon on another shoot with Nakajima Hiroyuki, and shot some great timelapses involving him too…

Grandma and I fully agreed on the whole situation…
We lost George Martin, Keith Emerson, Paul Daniels & Ronnie Corbett…

April

Sometimes it snows in April, and this year it most definitely did prompting me to write my 1st (and probably last) blog post on a celebrity death…

I half killed myself trying to keep up with Koji Kakinuma on another shoot for “Traces Of The Soul”

I did the motion graphics for the new News Shooter ident which plays at the beginning of every video…

I spent several hours a day with my head in After Effects working on my short film…

I held a $20,000 paint brush at a secret shoot…

My good friend the talented and lovely Laura Liverani was in town and she had an exhibition of her Ainu photographs at a sneak peak of the Ainu documentary she is working on…

I had given up not trying to frighten people when I went out…

The toilet at Scart Gallery had a polite request…

As well as the Purple one we lost Amber Rayne & Victoria Wood…

May

Once again I was shooting with Koji Kakinuma, this time him producing some amazing very large scale calligraphy pieces on a 3-day multi-cam shoot at his new studio outside Tokyo.

There was some interesting wallpaper in the toilet of a restaurant I was in…

I took possibly my favorite instagram photyo of the year at the Ryan McGinley exhibition which was otherwise a little underwhelming…

Some photos from my “Let the poets cry themselves to sleep” series were published on BBC Future…

I was filming with Icelandic DJ/Producer Arni Krisjanson for his crowd funding campaign…

There were some interesting parties…

Most days I wanted to scream this at the top of my lungs…

There was brief respite from losing people…(obviously thats not true, but there was a brief respite in losing people who had touched me in some way)

June

I went to Bali for “Brightening horizons by paying it forward” and directed/shot & Edited a video promoting the Banyumala Jungle Waterfall Trek in Wanigiri village.
It was awesome…

It was a scary place to be a vegetarian tho…

I released my parting shot to Japan short film “Not With A Bang” the result of literally months of work (read a little more about the process here)…

Hiroyuki Nakajima’s “LIFE” exhibition was on at Bunkamura in Shibuya and he was showing the film we collaborated on to promote it (see January above)…

It was (as it always is in June) my Birthday…

And I looked like this a lot, the two of which may or may not be related…

We lost Muhammad Ali, Kimbo Slice, Prince Be & Bill Cunningham

Mostly I was crazy busy with personal stuff because of what was about to happen in…

Part 2

Uchujin showing at St Neots Film Festival

Uchujin On Tour – Mujuworld in Cornwall Edition

Last week we finally managed to make it down to Cornwall to see my dear old friend and amazing artist Mr Muju and his equally awesome partner Miss Muju in their beautiful little country cottage.
A blissful week of epic Cornish scenery, lovely veggie food, reggae tunes, travelling in style in Miss Muju’s VW camper van and even a day of body boarding!
I couldn’t just have a holiday though, where would the fun be in that?
So with my new CAME TV Optimus gimbal (a great excuse to put it through it’s paces) and trusty Sony A7SII I filmed loads of stuff for my documentary in progress on Team Muju and put together this little film of our week.

Found a great tune to use under a creative commons licence for the soundtrack by DuBoLoGy – “Xylo Riddim + Dub (Yellow Dub)”

www.soundcloud.com/dubology-2

Many thanks for making that available :)

The Optimus performed super well despite my lack of practice using it, even on top of seriously wind blown Cornish headlands.
I love it :)

Please go and check out the work of the awesome Team Muju at www.mujuworld.co.uk

See a load of photos I shot too over on my Instagram account

“The Bowler Supremacy” Deep Sand Diesel For INFLUX

This months piece I DP’d, shot and edited in Belper, Derbyshire for my good friends Postfuel is now up on the Influx site.
This time it’s about Bowler Motorsport, a company that builds custom rally cars based on Land Rover Defenders.
Another fun and interesting job contributing to my slow and steady slide towards becoming a car nut.

Uchujin on tour – Newsshooter.com at Photokina in Cologne and more

The past few weeks has been a blur of (good) busyness what with a trip to IBC in Amsterdam at a days notice with the newsshooter.com team, a D.P. and editing job for my mates Postfuel on drift car nutter Buttsy Butler, a motion graphics job and then this past week to Photokina in Cologne again with Dan and the newsshooter.com team.

Trade show coverage is a strange manic beast with many gruesome heads that sees you shooting, editing and uploading several spots a day all while running around an enormous conference center whose floors are made from the hardest substance known to mankind (or at least that’s what my poor feet tell me after a week of walking 15km a day carrying a load of gear!).
Luckily the news shooter team consists of some truly lovely and hugely talented people so the manic intensity is offset with a lot of laughs and learning.
Big shout out to Dan Chung, Matt Allard, Lilian Ahlskog, Simon Glass, Joe Marine, Scott Karlins, Daniel Lindner, Tom Barnes, Katie Teesdale-Ward and Dave Newton for making the past few weeks so great.

Can’t forget a thanks to the cinema5d boys for being so damn friendly too :)

Anyway, below are the videos I shot and edited for news shooter at Photokina. Oh and by the way those nice News shooter idents at the beginning of every video….I made those too :)

Oh and for the record they were all shot on my trusty 4 year old Canon C100 MkI with Sigma and Tokina lenses. Despite all the hype of 4K and gear lust a camera that still looks great and works reliably every. damn. time. :)

Oh and there’s a load of photos from IBC and Photokina over on my Instagram account too.

Here are some additional videos that I shot but didn’t edit from Photokina:-

“Catching His Drift” Buttsy Butler on going sideways for INFLUX

The piece I DP’d and edited on drift car nutcase Buttsy Butler for my good friends Postfuel is now up on the influx site.
Great to be working with Postfuel again and a lot of fun meeting Buttsy.
Only downside is I’m starting to get quite into cars :)

Shooting Ghalamdar & Karl O’Brien – Calligraphitti Ambassadors

Sayonara Japan – Uchujin is leaving the building

“Not With A Bang” An Uchujin Films Short

I am proud to present my latest short film “Not With A Bang” (Title stolen from T.S.Elliot because I have delusions of grandeur) the result of months of work and what amounts to a final parting shot to Japan.
I advise watching it full screen on a reasonable sized monitor or it won’t make a lot of sense and you’ll miss most of it.

I’ve had the general idea for this kicking around for ages but it was only after a conversation with my good friend Sean Lotman a few months ago that the idea finally crystallized into something I thought I could attempt.
I knew roughly how to realize it but I also knew it would involve a LOT of work and the learning of some new software (Mocha for all the motion tracking) and getting much better at compositing in After Effects.
I had no idea when I started just how long it would take!

Motion tracking 30 signs into one shot and compositing them so they look like they are part of the scene and not just tacked on is a laborious process for very little pay off in some cases but I knew if I was going to do this I had to do it to as well as I possibly could.
Cue days of watching tutorials, trying things, refining them and frame by frame motion tracking. Rinse and repeat and repeat and repeat…….
In total it has taken more than 2 months of work…..for 3 minutes of film!

The end result isn’t technically perfect but…..in my humble opinion it’s pretty damn good. I doubt if anyone other than other motion graphics and composting people will even see most of the imperfections.
I have a new respect for the guys & girls that do it full time for a living because it makes your brain hurt and some parts of it are really fucking tedious!

That said it was a really interesting learning experience and a great way to improve my skills and for that reason alone it was worth all the time.

For the record all the statistics are from reliable sources.

Big thanks and respect to my sometimes collaborator and good friend Sean Bonner under his new alias //delay(5000); for making the music that adds an extra level to the soundscape.

Thanks also to the mystery girl (you know who you are:) who I filmed for the people disappearing shot.

In the words of Michael Stipe “I know that this is vitriol, no solution, spleen-venting, but I feel better having screamed , don’t you?”

I would be very interested to know what you think so please leave a comment!

Tech details-

Shot on a Sony A7Sii w/ Sony 28-70mm

Varavon Birdy Cam gimbal used for some shots (Thanks to Matt Allard for the loan)

Motion tracking in Mocha

Compositing in After Effects

Edit in Premiere Pro

Audio tweaking in Audition

The Japanese art of (not) sleeping – “Let the Poets” photos published on the BBC

Koji Kakinuma – Shooting Large Scale Calligraphy

Sometimes It Snows In April

CRI ratings – Testing the Pergear MTL900 Pro LED Light

“You’re Not From ‘Round Here” Podcast Episode 2 – Anthony Davis

So, Episode 2 of the podcast by me and Richard Smart “You’re not from ’round here” is out. This time we have a very entertaining talk to Anthony Davis about language and his work as a translator, tea ceremony and the Japanese LGBT community.

You can follow Anthony on twitter HERE.

We have a website: YNFRH

And a twitter: YNFRH

And you can subscribe on iTunes: HERE

You can listen below too if you are too lazy to click another link :)