Tag Archive for corporate film

Shooting as a freelance cameraman

April 16, 2013 / / Comments Off

I had the pleasure of working for Stuart Boreham last week as a freelance cameraman on a film he is producing about the groundworks taking place on the impressive Lots Road Power Station development in Chelsea.

Working as a Freelance Cameraman

Working as a Freelance Cameraman – photo by Stuart Boreham

This was a massive privilege for me as I’ve been a great admirer of Stuart’s video and photographic creations for many years.  As well as being a winner of a number of IOV Awards I think his body of work speaks for itself (take a look at his Vimeo channel).

This one-day shoot was just part of year-long project Stuart is working on for Careys who are carrying out the groundwork on this £500M development.  The entire site is being developed by Hutchison Whampoa and will consist of 13 separate buildings including two multi-story luxury tower developments.  With part of the development in Kensington & Chelsea and part lying within Hammersmith & Fulham, the site has not been without its planning challenges.  Now finally under way it will eventually become one of the most impressive Thames waterside features.

My freelance cameraman services were required to capture part of the action as a steel bridge was lifted over a creek separating the two sides to site. In addition to me filming on a Sony EX3, Stuart also had another freelance cameraman shooting on a DSLR doing the funky slider shots as well as filming from a cherry picker once the bridge lift was taking place.  Stuart had also located a couple of GoPro cameras, plus a Sony EX1, to capture a range of timelapse sequences of the movement. Whilst all this was going on Stuart was taking stills of the proceedings.

Even though there was a lot of hanging around waiting for the action, once things did get started it was all hands on deck and meant dashing from one side of the creek to the other in order to get the bridge being lifted into its final position.  I don’t mind admitting it was exhausting work.

I hope this is the beginning of more calls from Stuart for my freelance cameraman offerings.

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Filming Customer References

April 2, 2013 / / Comments Off

One of my most exciting and promising contacts came in towards the end of 2012 with an approach from a local agency on filming customer references for a number of blue-chip clients.  One of their largest and more prolific clients that use their services is British Telecom.

The agency specialise in producing a mixture of marketing collateral based on interviews and interactions with their client’s customers.  These marketing tools can be brochures, website content, fact sheets and/or videos – which are ultimately used to help their clients sell more of their products or services.

Filming customer references for BT

My work for them started with a edit-only job on a short film about ABM Rexel in Spain outsourcing their world-wide telecommunications infrastructure to BT Global. Filmed in Spain by a separate film company, the first task was to transcribe and then translate the customer interviews from which the agency produced a paper edit for me to follow.  Two versions of this film were eventually produced – one with and one without English subtitles.

The second commission was a short film about the John Taylor Hospice who had adopted BT’s N3 Mobile Health Worker technology into their practice in Erdington, Birmingham.  This was partly finished project which required additional and more up to date footage by way of filming customer references and BT representative interviews at the hospice. In a nutshell, N3 Mobile Health Worker is a system which enables health workers to instantly access patient records in the field – and also to enable collaboration with other health workers involved in their care.

The original footage supplied by BT was taken roughly a year before my involvement and consisted of interviews with various health workers who use the technology in their work.  These were all filmed in standard definition so I had to be a little creative in using them against the new high definition interview material.  Insetting these shots into pictures I took of the the mobile device overcame this problem quite well.  I also think the benefits of the N3 Mobile Health Worker technology to the hospice and their patients is very clear from the final film…

The task of filming customer references

Filming customer references and case studies are relatively straight forward filming challenges.  However, the work that goes on prior to filming is key to their success.  The agency are incredibly skilful word-smiths who understand their client’s needs and know how to capture the messages that will result in their clients achieving their goals.  They also fully understand the video production process and the best ways to get the message over using video.  Every shoot is therefore tightly storyboarded and planned – but at the same time they realise the benefits of using creative professionals such as Video Artisan to help direct and craft the content into something with purpose.

I’m now in the middle of the third film for this agency and BT Global which is in the final approval stages.  We’ve also started planning another film which is due to go into the filming stage mid-April – so it looks like this is going to be a regular stream of work for Video Artisan.

I’ll be adding these films to my showreel as each one gets signed off – so keep an eye out for them.

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Eiger Safety promotional DVD nears completion

January 16, 2013 / / No comments

With Oyster Card in hand and lightweight shooting kit on my back I was off to film one of the final locations of the Eiger Safety promotional DVD today.  This time I was heading towards the Hilton London Metropolitan in Edgeware Road.  Being up at the crack of dawn for a 6:45 rendezvous at Marble Arch was no fun – but at least I wasn’t suffering on my own.  Everyone on the tube at this time of the morning (and more so at this time of year) rarely look like they want to be there – so I snapped it on Instagram.

Apart from signalling the nearing of the end of this year-long promotional DVD filming schedule, the subject of the day’s shoot was vital in telling the story of Eiger Safety as we were capturing their guys performing two of their most frequently performed tasks – namely eye-bolt installation and testing.

Eye-bolts going in at the Hilton

Eye-bolts going in at the Hilton

Health & Safety regulations touch us all these days and one of the major areas is height safety systems and procedures.  Eiger Safety cover pretty much everything within this sphere.  These eye-bolts provide a safe tethering point for those working near to height hazards.  Whilst they are installed in many different locations and for different height risks, the ones I filmed today were being installed in hotel rooms to enable the staff and contractors to safely clean, inspect and maintain windows and openings.

Apart from installing thousands of these anchor points each year they all have an annual re-testing requirement too.  It was therefore important to get a fair bit of the guys doing the final test on the newly installed eye-bolts.  It might not have been as exciting as some of the other locations and activities I’ve filmed for them (Clifton Suspension Bridge was my favourite) – but nonetheless the film would be incomplete and almost pointless promotional DVD without it.

Eye bolt test

The all-important testing stage for the promotional DVD

The next location shoot will be the last (mind you – they’ve said that before) and will cover the installation of handrail systems – another huge part of Eiger Safety’s work.  These are pretty much all outside locations so I’m praying for the weather to warm up for that day.  After that it’ll be some studio work in filming an interview with the MD to use as a narrative for a longer form version I’m producing for them. This is in addition to the original brief of creating a short 3-min piece set to music that will form the opening part of a PowerPoint sales presentation.  I love it when jobs expand! : )

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New Year – New Edit Suite

January 2, 2013 / / Comments Off

After a year producing some amazing films for some amazing clients, I thought it was about time to give Video Artisan a little New Year treat in the form of a nice shiny new edit suite from those ever so knowledgeable chaps at DVC.  Even though my current 4.6 based Edius edit suite has turned out the work without a hitch the workload that looks like it’s going to be landing on my desk this year calls for something that packs a little more punch.  That said, the old edit suite is not being put out to grass quite yet as it’s going to be doing some of the lighter work that seems to pile up at the busier times.

Our Edius Broadcast video production facilities in Loughton

Our Edius Broadcast video production facilities in Loughton

Why chose an Edius edit suite?

I am a Grass Valley Edius man through and through these days – albeit that I’ve had varying levels of experience with just about every editing system out there.  My first entry into non-linear editing was way back with a Fast AV Master capture card running alongside a very early version of Adobe Premier (I think it was 1.2).  However, before that I honed my editing skills on a three machine UMatic edit suite with a load of other electronic gizmos that were needed to perform basic shot transitions and effects.  Oh how times have changed!  So too have the costs as that UMatic edit suite set us back about £20k which was an awful lot of money back in 1986!

UMatic Edit Suite

UMatic Edit Suite in full swing – driven by the delectable Tiffany

Though I could have coped with staying with the old edit suite for a few more months I really longed for a few of the benefits of the latest version of Edius software and a beefier computer to house it in.  For instance, the old system was a little lumpy (understatement) when dealing with the Full HD MOV files created by the Canon 5DMkII.  To overcome this I would convert all camera files to the Canopus HQ for editing.  Whilst these files were easy to handle the process of having to codec convert the files did slow down the editing process somewhat.  It also resulted in using up much more HD space than was needed. The new system will be able to cope with four or five layers of Full HD – in real time.  Yum yum!  It should also speed up the online delivery encoding process which is another thing that seems to have taken up quite a bit of my 2012.

There are plenty of new tools that I’m going to enjoy playing with too in Edius 6.5 – and probably the most notable over my old software is the new layout tool. But there’s a whole host of improvements that will make the editing process quicker and easier…

  • Colour correction tool supports 10-bit colour depth
  • Export sequence with alpha channel
  • Native RED (.R3D) support*
  • Improved XDCAM/ P2 data transfer
  • 3D (stereoscopic) editing
  • AVCHD 2.0 support
  • AVCHD 3D export support
  • EOS movie support (ALL-I (I-only), IPB)
  • Camera RAW format support
  • Filmstrip view in Timeline
  • Built-in loudness meter
  • Built-in shake stabilizer
  • 720p Blu-ray authoring support
  • Flash F4V export
  • QuickTime HQ/HQX codec (Windows/Mac)

The PC system is based on an Intel® Core™ i7-3770K Processor 3.5GHz with Hyperthreading (8M Cache, up to 3.90 GHz) running the Windows 7 Pro 64 bit operating system.  With 8GB of RAM, 8TB of SATA HD storage and a 128GB SSD system drive – the beast should fly and chew it’s way through the kind of video production work I’m attracting.

Edius 6.5

The new edit suite based on Edius 6.5

Why choose DVC for building my new edit suite?

I did weigh up the options and various sources for getting the new edit suite built – and even considered building the thing myself.  To be honest, the latter choice went in and out of my mind quicker than lightening.  Whilst I’m pretty sure I could put something together after watching a few YouTube videos and reading up on the subject – I’m a great believer in leaving things to those who really know what they are doing.  I also value the benefit of having someone to go back to if the thing didn’t work (a distinct possibility with home-build systems). I also really value the kind of support that an experienced NLE system builder can provide ‘post sale’ – and there are very few that have as much experience as the folk at DVC.  They also happen to produce some pretty comprehensive user guides with their systems which will no doubt be handy in the first few months of use.

The new system is now in the process of being built and it should be with me within the next 10-days.  I’ll be giving you updates on this and a little more background on my choice of system as soon as I’ve got it installed in the edit suite.  In the meantime, I’m gagging to get my hands on it and start using it on my next corporate film.

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IOV Award winning video moment

December 11, 2012 / / Comments Off

The IOV has just released the videos filmed at their 2012 awards night – with ‘Supadance – Shoes for Dance’ being announced as the award winning video in the Best Open Category.  I also picked up second place in the Best Documentary Category too.

IOV Awards 2012 – Best Open Category from Institute Of Videography on Vimeo.

It’s not the best coverage of the awards I know but they were struggling with the light sensitivity on the cameras and a dimly lit room.  Still – it’s a nice reminder of the moment when I discovered I’d produced an award winning video.

I went into a kind of PR frenzy in the weeks that followed to make everyone aware of my award winning video. I’ve blogged, Facebooked, Tweeted, LinkedIn’d, updated my website, updated my email signatures, shared the news with my clients, sent out numerous standard press releases, amended title sequences for video, taken publicity stills and (I kid you not!) designed some new ‘Award Winning Videography’ polo shirts.

IOV Award Winning Video

Kevin Cook Celebrating his IOV Award Winning Video

A couple of local media have since published my news story – including ‘West Essex Life‘ magazine (on page 7) and it’s also been on the ‘Everything Epping Forest‘ website.  I’m very grateful to these companies for sharing this info – and any other magazine or website that has also spread the word which I’m not yet aware of.  I do keep looking!

Guess I’m going to have to start thinking about the 2013 IOV Awards and how I can better this year’s haul.  There’s really no magic formula to creating an award winning video – other than always trying to make your next production your best production.  Standard practice really : )

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