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.
Whenever I go somewhere new I try to seek out the local tattoo shop as it almost always provides interesting people to talk to.
My hometown proved no exception and I’ve slowly become friends with the good people there.
So when they told me they were moving to new premises I suggested they might need a new website and perhaps some photos and a video to introduce people to it……
Watch the video here and head over to their site to see more.
If you are in Huntingdon maybe even swing by and get some new ink, don’t forget to mention who sent ya :)
(Really loving this combo at the moment, beautiful images and far better colour straight out of camera than my old A7SII. That new autofocus doesn’t hurt for gimbal work either.)
Just arrived home from another very fun IBC 2018 in Amsterdam with the Newsshooter crew.
A tiring but immensely enjoyable 5 days with Matt Allard, Erik Naso, Simon Glass, Elliot Smith and Scott Karlins covering all that was new and interesting from one of the stand out shows on the camera nerd trade show calendar.
Here are all the videos that Erik and I shot together and you can read the full stories and see what Matt and Simon covered over on newsshooter.com
As always a great pleasure to hang out with this bunch of very talented, knowledgeable and super nice guys.
Big shout out to the IBC press area show staff for their hospitality as always. See ya next year!!
Back in December last year I was lucky enough to visit “VC Motorcycle Club” (The VC stands for Vicious C*&ts apparently:) at their workshop in East London for INFLUX to interview Gemma and Namin for the short film above. It’s finally up on the INFLUX site so I can share it here.
There was clearly not a vicious bone in their bodies and it was a really fun day. Some awesome custom bikes too, which I had to pretend to know something about :)
Watch the film (which I edited too) and then check out their website to see more of what this awesome group of custom bike riding women does for the female motorcycle community.
Last week I was honored to be invited by Lee Mason to give a presentation about my work at the Collusion Maker Takeover event taking place at iMet in Huntingdon.
I talked about myself (oh the vanity:), “Boys For Sale“, “Traces Of The Soul” and the showed the Handbook “New Day” video I made recently.
You can watch my talk (shot from a terrible angle on a Galaxy S8) above.
It was a really interesting day with lots of inspiring projects being shown and talked about and I’m very grateful to Lee and Collusion for inviting me and all the great work they are doing in the local area.
After myself in the evening session LAICA gave a talk about the “bunker project” album that he and Graham Dunning made, Miri Kat & Martin Dubka played us some of their beautiful live coding meets modular synth music and to top it off the amazing Graham Dunning played us some of his unique and wonderful Mechanical Techno.
There was also food provided by the insanely delicious Guerilla Kitchen (Those “black Bean Balls” were simply the most delicious balls I’ve ever had in my mouth, if you can find them, eat some:)
My first official music video in a while, “New Day”, taken from the new Handbook E.P. “Reminiscence“, out now on Cascade records.
I’ve made two music videos for Cascade previously, Repeat Pattern “Fuck But Beautiful” and Fitz Ambro$e “FAIFF”, so I reached out to Handbook after seeing a tweet from Cascade records promoting the EP and he chose “New Day” as the track he wanted a video for with the brief “I love rivers, countryside and birds/insects so that would be a great focus. Probably difficult, but something ant based would be dope.”
I love this kind of brief as it gives me the amazing freedom to try out ideas and play with effects I otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity to, even better when the music is as good as this.
Some fun involving a borrowed Garmin Virb 360 (Thanks Documentally:)camera, lots of tests, waiting for the English weather to play ball to get the clouds I wanted and a lot of meticulous masking and editing and voila…..
I really love the happy, uplifting quality of much of Handbook’s work, do yourself a favor and check out his other stuff:-
n. A form of non-rapid eye movement parasomnia that causes people to engage in various sexual acts while they are asleep.
***Disclaimer No.1- Almost definitely NSFW (though to be honest the title really should have given that away)***
***Disclaimer No.2 – This film is intended to spark a conversation about this controversial condition. I realise that it may offend some people and that there will be those that don’t believe it is a real condition and is used as an excuse for sexual assault, which I in NO way condone. But, that said, like most controversial things, I think it is better to discuss them openly than pretend they don’t exist. Sexsomnia as a condition is well documented and recognised by the medical community as a real parasomnia.***
When I first read the blog post that was to become this piece I was a mixture of fascinated and slightly disturbed. I’d never heard of Sexsomnia but as someone who is more than a little fascinated by sleep and our often problematic relationship to it I really wanted to know more.
The author of the anonymous post was someone I knew and after a little persuasion, he agreed to read the post on camera, provided I hid his identity.
I’d had every intention of doing something with the footage at the time, but the subject had reservations, understandable I think. It’s not an easy thing to comprehend and I can see if you had read about the condition in a newspaper in relation to some crime, for example, you may be skeptical as to its status as a real condition.
I did some tentative research and tried to find online forums with other sufferers(?) but for the most part drew a blank.
Given my subjects fear of their identity being revealed and not really knowing how to present the footage in a way that would be visually interesting I filed the footage away and largely forgot about it.
That was 5 years ago.
Fast forward to a couple of months ago as I was having a conversation about my own sleep issues with a friend and a memory was sparked.
On returning home I dug out the footage (thank you past me for your very well labeled and multiple hard disk backups) and found it to be as compelling as I remembered.
I reached out to the subject again and asked if he would mind me doing something with the footage now. He agreed.
More than I care to admit hours of laying out and animating text, consulting and working with talented electronic musician Dave “LAICA” Fleet on the music / sound design and I had the piece presented here.
I’m very pleased with how it turned out and am very thankful to “the sexsomniac” for allowing me to use the footage and to LAICA for the music.
I think it raises some interesting questions and offers a brief insight into a condition that is little known or talked about.
If you or anyone you know is affected by Sexsomnia and would be interested in talking to me on camera I would be very interested in making a longer piece with multiple view points on the subject. Please get in touch.
As always protecting my sources is of the highest priority and you would be afforded the same sensitivity that the subject of this piece was.
My public PGP key, if you wish to use encrypted communication, is HERE.
I’ve known Mr Muju for almost 20 years and Miss Muju for maybe 1/2 that. They are and continue to be not only some of my best friends but a constant source of inspiration.
Mr Muju, one of the most talented artists I know, is responsible for me first seriously picking up a camera and must be credited with introducing me to Buddhism long before he was the catalyst that made me go to India thereby changing the course of my life forever. I feel genuinely lucky to be his friend.
Miss Muju is also an incredibly talented artist whose plush and resin work has delighted and amazed fans & fellow artists from around the world. She drives a VW Camper and is quite simply lovely.
Together they form Mujuworld…..Paintings, drawings, plush and bio-resin designer toys from a unique shared creative vision.
They are easily the nicest, most relaxed people I know.
I did a photograph of them for my “Talented Friends” series several years (2009 to be exact, when they visited me in Tokyo) ago but I’ve always wanted to make a short documentary about them and their amazing work. Unfortunately, they are legendarily camera shy and put off doing an interview for years. By a process of wearing them down, moaning and emotional blackmail I finally managed to get them to sit down and talk on camera late last year.
The result, along with a lot of accumulated archive footage both mine and theirs and many examples of their work is the 20ish minute documentary “Tuning Into Radio Muju”.
So sit down with a cup of tea and take a trip with us to Muju Mountain!
Eric Arthur Blair’s (better known as George Orwell) birthday and the 10th Anniversary of the 1984 Symposium, a gathering put together by Christian “Documentally” Payne to bring together some like (and not so like) minded people to discuss issues surrounding civil liberties, surveillance and the current political climate. (And this year quite a lot about Hammocks and barefoot shoes…)
Christian always holds his gathering on George’s birthday regardless of what day of the week it is, this year it happened to coincide with the Orwell Society’s visit which happens on the closest Sunday. That meant that as well as our merry band, a number of Orwell Society members were in attendance including Richard Blair (Orwell’s adopted son) and Archie Blair (Orwell’s grandson), who both gave readings from Orwell’s writings.
Christian also had a special treat for those of us in attendance, a specially brewed bottle of “Wallop”, a “mild” beer brewed to the same recipe as the beer Orwell himself was fond of, with custom designed labels by Jess Payne. (“Wallop” is rhyming slang – Wallop the child, Mild:)
I’m, of course, a long time fan of Orwell and in particular “1984” (though arguably Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” is closer to our current shitshow situation – The oppressive state does not need to force data collection etc upon us we submit to it willingly (Facebook et al) in exchange for shiny things…..) so to celebrate his birthday at his graveyard was a great honor and one I hope to repeat, along with Documentally and the other participants for many years to come (until such gatherings are illegal of course :)
You can hear the full readings by Richard and Archie Blair HERE (Audio recorded by Me and edited by Documentally)
Plenty of other #1984symposium content over on the Twitter hashtag HERE
Technical mumbo jumbo:
Video shot on Sony A7sII with Sony FE 28-70 lens, CameTV Optimus gimbal, Rode Video mic pro and RodeLink wireless filmmaker kit.
(Photo courtesy of Christian “Documentally” Payne, tattoos and receding hairline all mine)
Additional footage from Documentally’s Livestream of Richard and Archie Blairs readings.
Music “Diffusa Est” by the Soli Sisters (used under a creative commons license)
Shooting some 200fps slow motion with the Sony PXW-FS5 (raw upgrade) and Atomos Shogun Inferno I’m reviewing for hireacamera.com What better way to test it out than to throw water balloons at Christian “@Documentally” Payne in the sunshine?
Music “Down Around Bull Creek” by Walker Winn soundcloud.com/walkerwinn Used under a Creative Commons 3.0 licence
Our original plan was to film Christian on a trampoline, whilst throwing water bombs at him (I know right? genius)
However, during the warm-up shot there was a little….ahem…….incident :)
NO DOCUMENTALLY’S WERE HARMED IN THE MAKING OF THIS FILM! (ok he had a tiny graze on his knee which he’s still going on & on about…….oh and a bill for a new trampoline :)
In case anyone cares:- Recorded in ProResHQ on the Atomos Shogun Inferno Lens – Fujinon 18-55 T2.9 at about 25mm T5.6 (Also from hireacamera.com) 1000ISO with varying amounts of ND Minimal colour correction in Premiere Pro
The BVE 2017 show was held at the Excel center in London’s Victoria dock area from 28th Feburary to 2nd March and I was there with Dan Chung from Newsshooter.com.
Here are the videos I shot and edited for Newsshooter.com at the show.
The usual suspects were at the show causing trouble, for the 2nd time at a show Dan and Kai Man Wong got us moved along by security for messing about with cameras on the charters pole
And my favorite tattoo at the show was this little number that not many people would recognize…….
After seeing my short “Not with a bang” when he was the judge at St Neots Film Festival, Christian “Documentally” Payne hinted that he’d quite like an ident for his videos in a similar style, so seeing as it was his birthday and I hadn’t got him a card…….
You can watch the ident above and read about how I made it below :)
Christian said he wanted something “dystopian” so armed with a Sony A7SII and a CameTV Optimus gimbal I went out and shot some short clips in a deserted town center in deepest darkest England. Obviously not on a Friday night because who wants to walk around with loads of expensive gear and long hair in an English town center with all those drunk Brexit supporters, not me that’s for sure. I was looking for big signs to replace with his website address, a shot that could be anywhere and which signs I would need to replace that were parallaxing behind other things as that is a lot of extra work.
Once I had watched the footage, decided on which shot I was going to use and imported it into Premiere Pro to trim it to the correct length, the fun began. The workflow I used was similar to the process used in “Not with a bang” but thankfully less complicated, it goes like this:-
For each sign or element that needs replacing find the frame in the original video where it is at its largest and export a TIFF of that frame, making a note of the frame number.
Open it up in Photoshop and paint out unwanted elements (e.g. text) in the original sign using a combination of the clone tool, fills and adding noise to make it look as “in the scene” and natural as possible. Add in any text or images that will replace the original sign. Tweak to taste referring back to the original frame to match grain, lighting and faux-3d position.
Turn off the background layer in Photoshop and export a transparent PNG of the whole 1080p frame with just the new element and its background. Open a new After Effects composition, import the footage and the transparent PNG you just created. Marvel at how great it looks, or tweak it using curves etc until it does. Open a new Mocha Pro project and import the footage. Carefully track the sign/element you are replacing paying particular attention to the planar surface, the corners need to be accurately placed and tracked for this to be convincing. This step can get complicated if the track doesn’t want to play ball or if the element you want to track passes behind other things in the scene or if there are lots of reflections or if the scene is shot at night and the footage is grainy or……lots of other reasons. Just persevere with it, Mocha is very good at tracking (way WAY better than the native tracking in After Effects). Once you have a good track position the play head in Mocha to the frame number you took the original still from and use the “align selected surfaces” button to push the corners of the planar surface out to the corners of the 1080p frame. Hit the “Export Tracking Data” button and copy the “After Effects Corner Pin (supports motion blur)” data to the clipboard.
Hop back into after effects and paste the data onto the PNG layer (with the playhead at the beginning of the composition) Play back the composition and exclaim – 1) “oooh that looks nice” or 2) “fuck that doesn’t look right” For option one, pat yourself on the back, save the after effects project and have a nice cup of your chosen hot beverage, you need to get up and walk around now because you’ve been at staring at a screen for long enough. For option two, try to figure out why it looks shit and go back into Mocha to refine the track or Photoshop to tweak the replacement until you get to option one.
Deep vein thrombosis averted re-watch the original clip paying very close attention to any reflections that pass over your replaced element or brightness changes that occur over the clip duration. In After Effects watch your composition again and think about wether you need to add brightness/curve adjustments over time to mimic any changes you noticed occurring in the original shot. If you noticed reflections you may need to place a copy of the original footage over the top of your lovely tracked replacement and mask some areas so we can see the reflections again, it needs to look as real as possible because our brains are very fucking good at noticing when it doesn’t.
Right done all that? Now go back to the beginning and do it all again for every element you want to replace! If one of your elements passes behind another element in the scene scratch your head and think about how you are going to make that work with a combination of masked copies of the original footage or some other voodoo. If there is a reflection of something you have replaced visible in a shiny surface in your footage you are going to have to deal with that too. It will be a pain in the arse, especially if the surface it is reflecting in is curved, good luck with that.
Ok, really all done and happy? Great! Render out the final composition from After Effects as a nice high quality ProRes file. Import it back into the original Premiere Pro sequence and place it above your original footage. Add any additional effects like the old TV or RGB split ones I used in places, add an adjustment layer and colour grade to your chosen look. Add in the lovely audio track that you got sent to complete the recipe… Export to a nice internet friendly codec. Upload to Vimeo or Youtube and send your friend/client a link and revel in all the praise they heap upon you for your great (and fast) work. Go and have a well deserved beer.
Alternatively hire me to do it all for you, my rates are surprisingly reasonable.
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!
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)”
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.
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:-
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 :)
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.
The film will also be playing at the exhibition and I hope to see some of you there to see Nakajima San’s beautiful work.
It has been a real honor to work with Nakajima San on this and some other projects over the past few months and I would like to thank him again for choosing to work with me on this project and for my lovely new Uchujin logo.
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